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CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 



Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2010 with funding from 
The Library of Congress 



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CRUISING AMONG THE 
CARIBBEES 



SUMMER DAYS IN WINTER MONTHS 



BY 



CHARLES AUGUSTUS STODDARD 

Author of " Across Russia," " Spanish Cities," " Beyond the Rockies ' 
Editor of " The New York Observer " 



ILLUSTRATED 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1895 




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COPYRIGHT, 1895, r.v 
CHARLES SCRIBNEKS SONS 

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TO 

IRENE STODDARD HOFFMAN 

WHO AS DAUGHTER, WIFE, AND MOTHER 

ADORNS THREE HONORED NAMES 

THIS RECORD OF TRAVEL 

IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED 

BY THE AUTHOR 



CONTENTS 



I. Literature of the Islands 

PAGE 

Seeking for Knowledge in Libraries — Pere Labat and bis 
Cbronicles — Hunt Collection of Books on tbe West Indies 
— Ober's Works — Kingsley's " At Last " 1 

II. Discovery and Characteristics of the Caribbees 

Voyages of Columbus — Wbere and what tbe Caribbees are — 
Volcanic and Coral Origin — The People and tbeir Destiny 7 

III. A Sea Change 

New York in a Snowstorm — A Ship with a History and an 
Adventurous Captain — Eare Company — Outsailing a 
Blizzard — From Winter to Summer — Ship Island 14 

IV. The Virgin Group 

The Danish Island of St. Thomas — How the United States 
lost it — War Vessels of Many Nations — Black Divers and 
Sharks — Human Beasts of Burden 23 

V. St. Thomas and its People 

Landing under Difficulties — Strange Fruits and Shells — 
Tobacco, Cigars, and Spirits — Dominant Kaces — Eelig- 

ion, Work, and Wages in St. Thomas 32 

vii 



Vlli CONTENTS 



VI. Santa Cruz 

PAGE 

Coldest Day for Years — Drinking Fresh Cocoanuts — Sugar 
Cane Plantations — How Sugar is made by a New Eng- 
lander — On board the Cruiser New York 41 



VII. From Saba to St. Kitt's 

Bottom on Top — Ship building on a Mountain — A Pennsyl- 
vania School Ship — Mount Misery and Monkey Hill — 
Wonderful Fishes — Banyans and Palmistes 51 



VIII. Life on St. Kitt's 

The Aborigines, the Settlers and their Wars — Churches of 
St. Kitt's — A Story of Deaf Mutes — Photographs, Coins, 
and Curios — A Drive around the Island and a Negro 
Wedding 60 



IX. A Real West Indian Island 

Beauties of Sea and Shore — Drowsy Old Town — In Days of 
Auld Lang Syne — A Fountain of Youth — Birthplace of 
Hamilton and Marriage Place of Nelson 68 



X. Antigua and its Annals 

Montserrat and its Lime Juice Factory — Praying for Rain — 
A Tale of Abduction, Jealousy, and Death — Indian 
Warner — Turtle Soup here and in London 76 



XI. Witchcraft and Superstition 

Ignorance and Credulity of the Negroes — Obeah, what it is 
and how practised — Similar Beliefs in Other Nations — 
Anansi, Jumbee and Duppy Stories — Spiritualism and 
Hypnotism 86 



CONTENTS IX 



XII. Guadeloupe 

PAGE 

Up Salt River — Hurricane Work — A Great Steaming Vol- 
cano — Coffee Plantations and Culture — Brilliant Market 
Scene — Extracts from Pere Labat 96 

XIII. Sabbath Day Island 

Rainbows among the Groo-groo Palms — Monsieur Cockroach 
and his Man Isaac — A Rare Mountain Ride — Tropical 
Airs, Sights, and Sounds — A New Paradise with Some 
Snakes — History of Dominica 108 

XIV. Caribs of Dominica and St. Vincent 

Columbus and the Caribs — A Forgotten Language — The 
Remnant of a People — Jenny the Monkey and her Reflec- 
tions , ..... 119 

XV. Isle de Martinique 

France in the Tropics — Fountains and Flowing Waters — 
Mardi Gras and Wild Revelries — The " Swizzle " and its 
Uses — Snake Stories — Empress Josephine, her Early Life 
here and her Statue — Madame de Maintenon 126 

XVI. Battles among the Islands 

Buccaneers of the Spanish Main — Count de Grasse and 
Admiral Rodney — A Decisive Naval Battle — The Sloop of 
War Diamond Bock 145 

XVII. St. Lucia 

The Best Landing Place in the Caribbees — Town of Castries 
— The Lofty and Weird Pitons — Tales and Traditions . . . 151 

XVIII. St. Vincent and the Grenadines 

A Superb Amphitheatre — Outburst of a Volcano — Making 
Arrowroot — Bargaining for a Baby — A Little Archipelago 159 



CONTENTS 



XIX. Barbados 

PAGE 

A Scene of Busy Life — Swarms of People — Bridgetown and 
the Ice House — Crisis in the Sugar Trade — Beneficent 
Effects of British Rule 167 



XX. Trinidad 

The Dragon's Mouth and the Gulf of Paria — Discovery by 
Columbus — Three Fearful Fires — Railways, Steamships, 
and Active Commerce — Famous Gardens 17( 



XXI. Hindus at Trinidad 

Contrast of Races — Coolie Apprenticeship, Labor, and Life — 
A Collection of Living Curiosities — Hindu Priest, Acca- 
wai Indians, and Coolie Belle 184 



XXII. La Brea and the Pitch Lake 

Where the Pitch comes from — Blackness of Darkness — 
Turning Pitch into Gold — Homeward Bound — An Bevoir 192 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



A road in the caribbees, trinidad . . . Frontispiece 

FACING PAGE 

st. thomas 32 

sugar cane plantation 46 

basse terre, st. kitt's 60 

palm grove, island of nevis 68 

st. john's, antigua 76 

a west indian type 86 

milk seller, guadeloupe 102 

indigo making, dominica 112 

st. pierre, martinique 128 

statue of josephine, martinique 138 

the pitons, st. lucia 156 

st. George's, island of Grenada 160 

nelson square, barbados 168 

governor's house, trinidad 176 

barbajee-hindu coolie priest 188 

xi 



CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

I 

LITERATURE OF THE ISLANDS 

SEEKING FOR KNOWLEDGE IN LIBRARIES PERE LABAT 

AND HIS CHRONICLES HUNT COLLECTION OF BOOKS ON 

THE WEST INDIES OBER's WORKS KINGSLEY's "AT 

LAST " 

One who is bound for a region which he has never 
visited before usually desires some specific knowl- 
edge of it in advance, though I have met occasional 
travellers who declared that one great enjoyment of 
travel was to "go it blind," meaning thereby that 
the unexpected gave .pungency and flavor to their 
experiences. It is better to go intelligently pre- 
pared, however; for one may be reasonably sure of 
adventures enough in any long journey, especially 
if it be somewhat out of the beaten track. 

The four-hundredth year of Columbus and the 
Columbian Exhibition gave a considerable stimulus 
to literature relating to the West India Islands, but 
after all that has been written during the past three 
years about the great discoverer, the books upon the 

B l 



Z CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

islands which he discovered have not been largely 
multiplied. In New York one naturally goes to the 
Geographical Society and to the reference libraries 
for information, but the chief information obtainable 
at the former, aside from excellent maps, was in vol- 
umes published from one to two hundred years ago. 
Among these the work of Edwards is a standard, and 
the chronicles of Pere Labat has been a treasure- 
house full of interesting accounts of scenery, animals, 
and people from which subsequent writers have not 
hesitated to enrich their pages. An interesting char- 
acter was this Labat. He spent two years at Marti- 
nique, then in 1696 passed to Guadeloupe where he 
established a station of the Dominican Order, with 
which he was connected, and distinguished himself 
as an agriculturist and an engineer. Returning to 
Martinique, he became procureur-general of the mis- 
sion, and was held in high esteem by successive 
governors for his diplomatic and scientific services. 
He explored the archipelago of the Antilles, founded 
in the year 1703 the city of Basse-Terre, and in the 
same year made himself felt in the conflict with 
England for possession of the island. 

He tried hard to convert the Caribs. They were 
ready to sell their secrets of healing and of poison, 
and to accept Christianity and be baptized for French 
brandy or money that would buy it, but there was 



LITERATURE OF THE ISLANDS 8 

no connection in their minds between religion and 
morality. He records his acquaintance with the Carib 
queen of Dominica, a woman of a strange history 
among the French and English, more than a hundred 
years old and with a large number of descendants. 
She was naked and bent double, but the French 
Father made her talk, and they exchanged gifts. 

A visit to the Mercantile Library at Clinton Hall, 
which is one of the most wide-awake and useful 
institutions in the city, revealed the fullest cata- 
logue of books upon the West Indies. There were 
to be found here Charles H. Eden's "West Indies," 
and Bates's " Central America," and the " Cruise 
of the Falcon," by Knight, and Charles Kingsley's 
" At Last " — all London books — and McQuade's 
" Cruise of the Montauk," a rollicking tale of a 
yachting trip, published in New York ten years 
ago, and two capital books by F. A. Ober. The 
last of these is called " In the Wake of Colum- 
bus," and is a record of the author's experiences in 
visiting the West Indies to solicit the co-operation 
of the various governments of the islands in the 
World's Fair at Chicago. A previous visit to the 
West Indies a dozen years before had qualified Mr. 
Ober for such an embassy, in which he was measu- 
rably successful, as all visitors to the departments at 
the Fair relating specially to Columbus will remem- 



4 CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

ber. Besides these books, there is Lafcadio Hearn's 
delightful " Two Years in the French West Indies," 
pervaded throughout with the dreamy and delicious 
atmosphere of the islands, and Paton's "Down the 
Islands," a veritable guide-book in a most agreeable 
disguise. Further researches produced a list of the 
names of English and French works, and reference 
to a variety of magazine articles through fifty years ; 
but the former were not to be had or consulted here, 
and the latter were chiefly of that impressionist style 
of literature which every child of the pen can create 
for himself and his transient readers ; pleasant read- 
ing which is by no means to be despised, but not 
valuable to the knowledge seeker. 

After my return from voyaging among the Car- 
ibbees, I found at the Public Library in Boston the 
Hunt collection of books, maps, and charts upon the 
West Indies. This is one of the most complete col- 
lections in existence ; of great service to the traveller, 
and of especial use to the student of African slavery 
and emancipation. 

Mr. Ober's book is perhaps the most useful and 
instructive book for the tourist who wishes to camp 
and hunt in the various islands. He has visited and 
described more of the Caribbees than any modern 
writer. He is an enthusiastic naturalist, and was 
specially devoted to birds and woods, two subjects 



LITER AT DTtE OF THE ISLANDS 5 

which have more wonderful illustration in a small 
space in the Caribbean Islands than elsewhere in the 
world. His visits to the West Indies for the pur- 
poses of natural history naturally led him to take an 
interest in the great navigator, whose trail he was 
continually crossing, and as special commissioner to 
the West Indies, he made an exhaustive examination 
of everything in these islands which had reference to 
Columbus. Mr. Ober has followed Columbus through 
all his voyages, writing, as he says, " every descrip- 
tion from personal observation, and using the histori- 
cal events merely as a golden thread upon which to 
string the beads of this Columbian rosary." His 
book is lavishly illustrated and decorated, and con- 
tains more than five hundred pages, of which less 
than one-fifth are given to the Lesser Antilles. 

Charles Kingsley's book, "At Last," is one which 
will repay reading, even though the reader never 
intends to follow in his track ; for it is careful and 
keen in its observation of men and things, abounds 
in truthful descriptions and vivacious anecdotes, and 
is the work of a thorough and conscientious scholar, 
whose comparative estimates are impressive and val- 
uable. It is fairly illustrated, but art has not yet 
been summoned to the illustration of this part of the 
world, although it has more wonders of beautiful 
and strange scenery than almost any region of equal 



b CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

extent. Of geographical illustration there is no 
lack, and the reason for this is evident. Sailors must 
have complete and trustworthy charts by which to 
guide their ships in this age of the world. Vessels 
no longer creep around the coasts, and by reason of 
their light draught, find their way into little bays 
and harbors which had never been dreamed of. Now 
they strike boldly across wide and dangerous seas, 
and run equally through night and darkness and at 
noonday. Lighthouses and charts and steam and 
telegraphs and meteorological observations and re- 
ports have become essential to commerce, while art 
and pictorial illustration have been only the hand- 
maids of pleasure and luxury. But a new day is 
dawning, the system of picture teaching is rapidly 
being developed, the magazines elegantly, and the 
newspapers rudely illustrate their articles, and ere- 
long there will be no corner of the earth which can 
be read about that will remain unknown to human 
vision. Then perhaps it will be needless for the 
traveller to describe anything except his adventures, 
perhaps hardly these. I am thankful that the full 
development of the pictorial age has not arrived ; for 
its full advent would probably prevent me from trav- 
elling at all, and would also debar my friends from 
taking with me what I trust will prove an entertain- 
ing tour among the Windward Islands. 



II 



DISCOVERY AND CHARACTERISTICS OF 
THE CARIBBEES 

VOYAGES OF COLUMBUS WHERE AND WHAT THE CARIB- 
BEES ARE VOLCANIC AND CORAL ORIGIN THE 

PEOPLE AND THEIR DESTINY 

It was on the 25th of September, 1493, that Co- 
lumbus set sail from Cadiz on his second voyage to the 
New World. It was a different scene and company 
from that which marked his first departure. The 
mystery of the western ocean had been revealed, the 
spell of secrecy which had hung over it was broken, 
and the great navigator was going forth to gather the 
harvest which he had sown in tears and weariness. 
Could he have looked to the end of his career, per- 
haps on that September morning he would have been 
content with what he had achieved, and allowed 
others to toil and suffer and die for the fame and 
gold which allured him to his ruin. But that was 
yet far off, and the ships sailed away to the Canary 
Islands, where they were to rendezvous, and whence 
they were to make the start for Hispaniola, now 
called Hayti. 

7 



8 CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

On this voyage Columbus had gone much farther 
south than upon his first one. Then, after thirty- 
three days of sailing, he discovered the Bahamas, and 
landed either on the island of San Salvador, or on 
Watling Island, not far distant. Now, the fleet had 
not been in the open sea more than twenty days 
before land was seen. It proved to be an island, and 
Columbus named it Dominica in honor of the day, 
Sunday, upon which it was discovered. He could 
find no good harbor in Dominica, and, therefore, 
went ashore at another smaller island, which he 
called Marigalante, after his ship. He had found 
the Caribbean Islands, which are said to be the most 
beautiful group of islands in the world, covered with 
perpetual verdure and teeming with the rarest prod- 
ucts of tropical regions, and it is not to be wondered 
at, that he thought he had attained to an earthly par- 
adise. But these lovely spots were inhabited by a 
fierce race of Indians. The Caribs were said to be 
cannibals. At all events they successfully resisted 
the white invaders. Spaniards, and French, and 
Dutch, and English, in turn, sought to conquer them. 
They were crowded a little way back into the forests 
only to issue forth again and drive their enemies 
into the sea. Power and civilization could not 
subdue, they could only decimate and destroy them. 
So it has come to pass, that now, after centuries of 



DISCOVERY AND CHARACTERISTICS 9 

conflict, the European has worn out the West Indian 
Caribs. There are a few hundred of the natives 
left on Dominica. They are crowded into a small 
reservation and live upon the charity of a govern- 
ment which once tried in vain to conquer their 
ancestors. 

The West Indies make a great group of islands, 
which, doubtless, once formed apportion of the con- 
tinent of America. One who looks at their position 
on a globe, or studies their physical geography and 
natural history, will come inevitably to this con- 
clusion. They lie mostly in the tropics, between 
the fifty-ninth and eighty-fifth parallels of west 
longitude, and contain a total area of more than 
one hundred and fifty thousand square miles. The 
greater portion of this territory is embraced in four 
islands — Cuba, Santa Domingo, Jamaica, and Porto 
Rico, but there are more than a thousand other 
islands. Geographers have separated this great group 
into four, dividing them according to their position, 
their size, and their relations to each other. Thus 
the sis hundred little flat coral islands, which form 
the northernmost group, are called Bahamas; the 
four large ones named above, with some other small 
islands adjacent, are called the Greater Antilles ; 
while the curving chain of islands which extends 
from Porto Rico, southwesterly to the delta of the 



10 CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

Orinoco, is called the Lesser Antilles. These are 
also known as Caribbean, since they lie chiefly in 
the sea of that name. Sometimes they are divided 
into Windward Islands — by contrast with the fourth 
group — and Leeward Islands, the former class end- 
ing at Martinique, and the latter beginning there 
and extending to the coast of Venezuela. 

The Antilles are volcanic ; earthquakes have 
shaken the whole archipelago ; there have been 
eruptions of lava and ashes during this century in 
some of the islands ; smoke and steam arise on St. 
Lucia, and there is no reason to suppose that there 
will not be eruptions again, from some of the many 
craters upon the islands which now seem so extinct 
that a colony of Dutchmen dwell peacefully in one 
of them. Froude says : " The islands are merely 
volcanic mountains with sides extremely steep. 
The coral insect has made anchorages in the bays 
and inlets, elsewhere you are out of soundings al- 
most immediately." According to another writer, 
the West Indies are remains of a mountain range 
which at some remote period united Avhat we now 
call North and South America. The islands have 
been repeatedly likened to Vesuvius, and the waters 
about them to the Bay of Naples. Charles Kingsley 
in explaining this resemblance, says: "Like causes 
have produced like effects, and each island is little 



DISCOVERY AND CHARACTERISTICS 11 

but the peak of a volcano, down whose shoulders 
lava and ashes have slidden toward the sea. Some 
carry several crater-cones complicating at once the 
structure and scenery of the island, but the majority 
carry but a single cone." 

The soil formed from the lava ashes is very rich, 
and when well watered, as it is by frequent rains in 
most of the islands, it is very productive. Among 
the articles which are chiefly raised are the sugar- 
cane, tobacco, coffee, and cotton. Large establish- 
ments with improved machinery for making sugar 
are to be found upon most of the islands, though 
this industry has not added to their real wealth and 
prosperity since the emancipation of the slaves. 
There are fine forests of choice woods, lignum-vitee, 
mahogany, and rosewood, and these forests which 
cling to the steepest mountain sides have a dense 
growth of vines and ferns and orchids, and are full 
of most beautiful but songless birds. There are few 
wild animals remaining, but a great variety of snakes, 
some of which are very dangerous and poisonous, 
multitudes of lizards and insects of all sorts and 
colors and character, in which the bad are pre-emi- 
nent, being represented by the tarantula spider and 
the mosquito. The inhabitants are a curious mixture 
of all European nationalities, in which English and 
French predominate ; there are also Hindus and 



12 CRUISING AMONG 1HE CARIBBEES 

Chinese, and negroes and the descendants of negroes, 
who have been allied with whites, but the blacks far 
outnumber the whites and are steadily increasing- 
while the white population is as steadily declining. 
It seems only a matter of time when these islands 
will return, not to the Indian tribes which Columbus 
found when he discovered the New World, but to the 
descendants of a race of black men who were brought 
to the islands as slaves. 

This future is discussed with earnestness by the 
English writers who have visited the West Indies, 
and various plans are suggested by which the evil 
day may be deferred. Froude says that, as to the 
West Indies, there are only two alternatives ; one is 
to leave them to themselves to shape their own des- 
tinies ; the other is to govern them as England gov- 
erns India, and continues : " Great Britain leaves her 
crown colonies to take care of themselves, refuses 
what they ask, and forces on them what they would 
rather be without. If I were a West Indian, I should 
feel that under the Stars and Stripes I should be 
safer than I was at present from political experiment- 
ing. America would restore me to hope and life; 
Great Britain allows me to sink, contenting herself 
with advising me to be patient." Sir Spenser St. 
John, in an elaborate work upon Hayti, shows that it 
is a country in a state of decadence, falling rapidly 



DISCOVERY AND CHARACTERISTICS 13 

to the rear in the race of civilization ; and with the 
steady withdrawal of the pure whites from the other 
islands, the same results might be expected to follow. 
But it is unprofitable to theorize; we will go and see 
with our own eyes the condition of things and try to 
report them impartially. 



Ill 

A SEA CHANGE 

NEW YORK IN A SNOWSTORM — A SHIP WITH A HISTORY 

AND AN ADVENTUROUS CAPTAIN RARE COMPANY — 

OUTSAILING A BLIZZARD — FROM WINTER TO SUMMER 
SHIP ISLAND 

There was a dense snowstorm enveloping New 
York on the Saturday in February when I started 
for the Windward Islands. As I drove through the 
streets to the pier at the foot of West Eleventh Street 
on the Hudson River everything was wintry in the 
extreme. The street cars had four horses, the cable 
road was being cleared by an enormous snow plough, 
the lamps at the corners were covered with great 
white hoods, the employees of the street cleaning 
bureau looked more helpless than usual as they 
leaned reflectively upon their brooms and shovels. 
By the time I had reached the pier the large flakes 
had formed a thick covering to the carriage and its 
load of luggage. A winter storm had begun which 
for the fury of its winds and the intensity of its cold 
has been unmatched in many years. On the ocean 

14 



A SEA CHANGE 15 

its ravages were disastrous beyond record, and even 
now we have not heard the last of them. The steam- 
ship Madiana lay Avrapped in a fleecy mantle beside 
the wharf. She is a large and handsome, a powerful 
and well-appointed vessel of 3,050 tons, originally 
built for the English service to the Cape of Good 
Hope and specially adapted for cruising in hot lati- 
tudes. In 1893 she was refitted for the service of the 
Quebec Steamship Company between New York and 
the Windward Islands. What tales these ships could 
tell ! This steamer was first the Balmoral Castle of 
the famous Castle line, and Carey, one of the Phoenix 
Park murderers, who turned informer and gave evi- 
dence against his associates, was sent on board this 
vessel with O'Donnell, another one of the assassins, 
to be deported to South Africa. O'Donnell shot and 
killed Carey and was returned to England and hung 
for his crime. The story perhaps clung to the old 
name of the ship. 

However that may be, when she entered a new 
service she received a new name, the Indian name 
of Martinique, Madiana, sometimes also written 
Madinina. We have thoroughly proved her good 
qualities, in storm and calm, under the northern 
sky and the Southern Cross. She has been our home 
for many weeks, and a more safe, comfortable, and 
well-behaved ship it would be hard to find. Her 



16 CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

captain is a thorough seaman, and his name, Rodney 
Fraser, recalls some of those stirring incidents of 
West Indian history, when Rodney the British ad- 
miral raised the naval power of England to its high- 
est point in these waters. He has faced danger and 
death in his sea service and was once thrown from 
the yard and lay with a broken leg in a cask of 
oakum, while his ship sailed sixteen days to Amster- 
dam. There the leg had to be broken again before 
he could walk, and even now there is a curious swing 
in his gait which is not entirely due to a life on the 
ocean wave. 

We were provisioned for a long cruise ; the tanks 
were full of Croton water, there were eighteen tons 
of pure ice in the ice-house, and in the refrigerator 
were fish and flesh and flying fowl and butter and 
milk and eggs and fruit, and abundant stores of all 
kinds to supply the demands of a large party of 
healthy Americans for many weeks. From first to 
last the table was well furnished, and the French 
chef proved his ability, while the stewards never 
failed in attention and courtesy. There was no 
crowd in the cabins. The ship could have accom- 
modated one hundred, but our company only 
numbered fifty-six, and to this fact perhaps was 
due the remarkable comfort which we enjoyed in 
a tropical excursion of such duration, where our 



A SEA CHANGE 17 

home was always on the vessel. There were four 
clergymen, two Protestants and. two Roman Catho- 
lics, one physician, three editors, half a dozen law- 
yers, nearly as many married, couples, four agreeable 
boys and girls, several single ladies and gentlemen, 
a jolly set of young men, and gentlemen of leisure 
and of business. There were no chronic invalids 
nor grumblers, no Sir Oracles nor high mightinesses, 
but a happily adjusted and well-balanced American 
party bound for a pleasant cruise, wind and 
weather permitting, from northern frost and rigors 
to sunny and warm southern seas. 

Under the dripping awnings we stood awhile in 
the wintry air saying last words, but when the clocks 
struck twelve the deep whistle sounded, the pro- 
peller began to churn the ice in the slip, and slowly 
the steamer moved out into the North River and 
headed towards the bay. We soon passed the 
Statue of Liberty, which was covered with a white 
robe, and ploughed onwards through the Narrows 
towards Sandy Hook. Half-way down the bay the 
huge bulk of the Cunard steamer Mruria rushed 
by us, snorting through her steam pipe, and throw- 
ing a white cataract of foaming water from her bows 
with every plunge into the swelling seas. Before 
we discharged our pilot she was out of sight, 
wrapped from view in drifting clouds of snow. 



18 CRUISING AMONG THE CAMBBEES 

From Sandy Hook we steamed directly southeast, 
and soon began to feel the swing of the sea, which 
increased as the night came down. Next day huge 
rollers came plumping over the main deck, and now 
and then a wave crest mounted the upper deck and 
buried the deck cabins in hissing wreaths of foam. 
One bark crossed our track bound north, otherwise 
we were alone for five days upon the deep. The 
second night closed in with heavy weather and 
high seas, which increased till it was evident that 
we were running before a gale of wind. Had we 
known from what we were escaping, we should have 
been thankful that our weather was no worse. All 
day no one was allowed on deck, and the lunch 
table was thinly attended, but towards night we 
were off Bermuda, the wind moderated, the sea grew 
smoother, the growing moon came out, and the air 
was mild. Next morning the passengers were sit- 
ting on deck without overcoats, though glad to be 
in the sunshine, the ladies had come to breakfast, 
and everybody was on hand at noon. The sky was 
flecked with light clouds like cotton-wool, the sea 
was blue like the Mediterranean, and now and then 
patches of a yellowish brown seaweed were seen 
floating on its surface. All day soft winds blew, 
the sea grew to an azure tint contrasting beautifully 
with the white lace work which edged its broken 



A SEA CHANGE 19 

waves. Evening came on with new beauties, a half- 
full moon directly overhead, with its evening star 
at hand strangely brilliant. The constellations be- 
gan to change their places in the sky. The " Dip- 
per " was far down towards the horizon, and the 
North Star proportionately low. We sat out late 
into the night star-gazing. Morning dawned like a 
moist June morning in England, with occasional 
brief showers and rainbows with broad bands of the 
primary colors, then an outburst of sun warm and 
bright. 

We sat under the awning and talked and read 
and enjoyed the wonderful transition from winter 
to late spring. The air grew warmer, the ocean 
was a deeper blue, and the afternoon sun drove us 
to our cabins to put on thin clothes and pack away 
our heavy ones. A rich sunset crowned a perfect 
day. The sea was smooth, and the sun dropped 
from a clear sky in less than two minutes into the 
waves. Immediately the wreaths of mist which had 
been hovering near the west took on a rosy tinge, 
a deep green color grew around the eastern horizon, 
which rose upward in three distinct shades, and was 
edged with soft folds of delicate pink. In the west 
a mass of umber-colored clouds bound with flaming 
red light, floated thinner and thinner till they were 
transparent. Then the red glow faded and darkness 



20 CRUISING AMONG THE CAEIBBEES 

came at once. Soon a single star appeared near 
the horizon, like a diamond, and the moon white as 
silver rose unclouded. A few minutes later there 
was an afterglow, as beautiful, though not as lasting, 
as those which gleam along the Nile; then the host 
of stars came out and the evening breezes began to 
blow. We were all on deck ; a violin, a guitar, and 
a mandolin had found their way into the open air, 
and with music and song the hours passed till the 
cabins were cool, and it was sweet to sleep. 

The sixth day came. The sun rose fair after a 
night of soft showers ; the sea was as blue as indigo, 
with little white crests where the wind ruffled its 
surface. Schools of little flying fish, which looked 
from a distance like the insect commonly called 
" devil's darning needle," fitted above the waves, 
and the sunlight struck through their filmy wings. 
They rose from the water and flew straight forward, 
sometimes one hundred feet, now and then skim- 
ming the tops of waves, seeming to get a new start 
as they touched the water. They were not much 
larger than a large smelt, and their wings were 
about as long as a man's hand. They are nice eat- 
ing, and plentiful in the Windward Islands, espe- 
cially at Barbados. 

Soon after noon we began to see the dim outline 
of steep and high hills on the southern horizon. 



A SEA CHANGE 21 

Gradually they became clearer and increased in 
number. We could see the surf dashing high on 
the coasts. The lower parts of the hills were rough 
and rocky, the upper portions covered with vegeta- 
tion and trees to the tops. No houses or structures 
of any kind were visible on the ocean side. St. 
Thomas was just ahead of us, and in the southeast 
were St. John and Tortola. Towards the west we 
could discern the outlines of Porto Rico and its out- 
lying islands. 

We scented the land as well as saw it, for the soft 
breeze was laden with fragrance. We kept a straight 
course towards a curious object which seemed to be 
a ship under full sail. It is known as Ship Rock, 
and so striking is the resemblance to a vessel under 
sail that one is ready to credit the story which is told 
of a French ship of war a hundred years ago. She 
was in chase of buccaneers, and seeing this rock on 
a hazy morning supposed it to be a ship under sail 
and fired a gun for her to heave to. Receiving no 
reply, the Frenchman laid his ship alongside and 
poured a broadside into the imaginary foe. When 
he wore ship and prepared to give another broadside 
the rising mist and the unmoved object showed 
him that he was attacking a rock and not an enerny. 
The sunlight had faded away and we entered 
the harbor of St. Thomas under a blaze of light 



22 CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

cast by the search lights of the New York, Cincin- 
nati, and Raleigh, of the North American Squad- 
ron, which were at anchor in the outer harbor. 
Four ships of war of other nations were lying here, 
and great festivities had been going on and were 
still in progress when we arrived. The French 
admiral was giving a dinner to the officers of the 
other ships, and as we anchored between the Du- 
quesne and the Moltke, their bands enlivened our 
evening. Many of the passengers went ashore in 
boats, which is the only method of landing in these 
waters. They strolled through the streets of the 
town of Charlotte Amalia, the local name of the only 
town on the island of St. Thomas. 

We were about fifteen hundred miles south- 
east of New York, it was the first week in Feb- 
ruary, the thermometer marked seventy degrees as 
we sat under the moonlight in the picturesque and 
landlocked bay, the shadow of the high hills with 
their conical summits around us. By-and-by the 
youths returned from town bringing white duck suits 
and straw hats, in which they duly appeared at 
breakfast and for weeks thereafter. We were in the 
tropics, winter was over and gone, and in a day or 
two the voice of the turtle was heard in the land, 
and the taste of the turtle was ours to enjoy. 



IV 
THE VIRGIN GROUP 

THE DANISH ISLAND OF ST. THOMAS HOW THE UNITED 

STATES LOST IT WAK VESSELS OF MANY NATIONS 

BLACK DIVERS AND SHARKS — HUMAN BEASTS OF 

BURDEN 

The Virgin Islands form the northern part of the 
chain of Windward Islands. Columbus discovered 
them on St. Ursula's Day and gave them a name 
commemorative of the eleven thousand virgins whose 
bones, together with St. Ursula's, are now exhib- 
ited to credulous travellers at Cologne. The islands 
are mostly small, and some of them are precipitous 
and hardly habitable. Washed by the waves of the 
Atlantic Ocean which are dashed against them by 
the steady force of the trade winds, and by furious 
storms, their windward sides are rough and shaggy, 
and the trees which grow on these sides are so bent 
out of shape, that they look more like flags than 
trees. Yet moisture and heat produce vegeta- 
tion which covers rocks and cliffs that in northern 
climes would be bare and ironbound. On the lee- 

23 



24 CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

ward or sheltered sides of the islands, trees and 
shrubs and flowers and grasses grow in profusion, 
and where cultivation is given to the soil it pro- 
duces abundantly. 

Of the Virgin group, and those which lie adjacent, 
St. Thomas, St. John, St. Croix or Santa Cruz, and 
Saba belong to Denmark ; Tortola, Virgin Gorda, 
Anegada, Culebra, Crab, and Anguilla are British ; 
St. Martin's is divided between the French and Dutch, 
and St. Bartholomew, or St. Bart as it is usually- 
called, is French. Anguilla is a long, low, and ser- 
pentine island, treeless and unfruitful, about fourteen 
miles in length by three miles in breadth. It is 
inhabited by a population of twenty-five hundred ; of 
these, less than one hundred are whites. The people 
are mostly devoted to pasturage. Several small out- 
lying islands are associated with Anguilla in forming 
a British colony, which is under the general govern- 
ment of St. Kitt's. St. Martin's is an island of lofty 
mountains and broad plains, whose fertile plantations 
cover the meadows and hillsides, while dense forests 
clothe the highlands. It is divided between the Dutch 
and French, having about three thousand inhabitants 
of the former and five thousand of the latter national- 
ity. The great industry of the place is the evapo- 
ration of salt. Twelve miles southeast from St. 
Martin's lies St. Bartholomew, which once belonged 



THE VIRGIN" GROUP 25 

to the Swedes, who named its chief town Gustavia, 
but it is now reckoned as belonging to France. 

St. Thomas, a Danish island, has an area of 
twenty-three square miles, little of which is level or 
cultivated. It lies in 18 degrees and 20 minutes 
north latitude, and 64 degrees 48 minutes west longi- 
tude. Its highest point is about fifteen hundred feet 
above the sea and it consists of a range of mountain 
peaks with supporting slopes or foot-hills. There 
are no rivers or streams, and but a single spring of 
water on the island. On this account, and because 
of its precipitous character, the soil is not tilled to 
any great extent, though a population of fourteen 
thousand live on the island. The climate is warm, 
there are frequent showers, and it is a healthful 
place and a favorite resort for invalids. This was 
the island which Mr. Seward, when secretary of 
state in 1866, bought for the United States from the 
king: of Denmark for five millions of dollars. It was 
intended to use the island chiefly as a coaling and 
refitting station for United States ships of war. 
After the bargain had been completed, Congress 
refused to ratify it, and our government stood dis- 
graced, and the Danish king justly angry, before the 
world. A glance at the map will show how valuable 
such a possession would be to a maritime nation, and 
how much more valuable to the United States than 



26 CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

to any foreign power. Indeed, a careful survey of 
the location of the "West Indies, aside from questions 
about their populations, would convince any impar- 
tial observer that their proper relations and destiny 
should lie with the continent to which they are adja- 
cent. Political and social considerations modify 
such ideas materially, and it is doubtful whether the 
United States would now accept the outlying islands 
of the continent as a free gift. That we could take 
them, and govern them so as to increase their pros- 
perity and our own ultimate wealth and advantage, 
there is little reason to doubt. 

We were awaked on the morning after casting 
anchor in the harbor of St. Thomas by strains of 
martial music, and the firing of salutes from the 
French and Russian ships of war which were 
anchored in the harbor. Three vessels of our own 
North Atlantic Squadron, a German, and a Haytien 
warship were here. The band of the French vessel 
played all the national airs except that of Germany, 
and we were told that on Emperor William's birth- 
day the Duquesne was absent, having sailed away a 
day or two previous for target practice ! Yet there 
were dinners and a formal interchange of courtesies 
between the officers of all the ships, which had culmi- 
nated in a grand ball on the night before our arrival. 

Upon looking around in the morning light a 



THE VIRGIN GROUP 27 

beautiful scene met our view. The harbor of St. 
Thomas is formed by a semicircle of mountains, 
which throw out prominent headlands on each side 
of the entrance. The mountains lie back from the 
sea and terminate in sharp ridges and peaks. The 
town is built on the slopes of three of these moun- 
tains, in the little valleys between and around the 
curving shore at their base. The mountains are 
covered with green of various shades which is 
formed by cultivated patches of soil and the foliage 
of masses of different trees. On the lower slopes 
white houses with red-tiled roofs are grouped, each 
house having some garden or greenery about it. 
Two large isolated structures, each with an ancient 
tower, bear the names of "Bluebeard's and Black- 
beard's Castles." Their inhabitants are by no means 
robber chiefs, however, for in one of them lives Mr. 
Edward Moron, the very polite and hospitable agent 
of steamship companies which do business here. 

St. Thomas is not a producing island. Its import- 
ance consists in its position as a harbor of refuge and 
a coaling station, and as a place for refitting vessels. 
Almost its only industry is the manufacture of bay 
oil and bay rum, for which the materials are brought 
from other islands like Porto Rico and Dominica, but 
there is a good market supplied not only with West 
Indian products but with the goods of many nations. 



28 CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

The harbor has from three to nine fathoms of water, 
will afford safe anchorage for several hundred 
vessels, and is constantly used by steamers from 
Europe and the United States, as well as by a great 
number of sailing ships and coasters. Upon our first 
visit, this harbor was full of vessels, besides the men- 
of-war of which I have spoken. Upon our second 
visit we found, among others, a German steamer 
which left New York the day after we sailed, and 
had put in here in distress, after battling with the 
elements for sixteen days, her decks swept, her bridge 
and wheelhouse gone, one of her officers drowned, 
and her hold half full of water. In another part of 
the harbor was a schooner dismasted and damaged, 
which had been blown far out of her course, which 
lay from New York to Maine, and found refuge 
away down here in the tropics. We could not be 
too thankful for the kind Providence which had 
ordered our sailing from New York a few days before 
one of the severest weeks in many seasons, during 
which the ocean was swept by fearful gales. We 
felt the beginning of the storm, but before it had 
reached its height were in the Caribbean Sea, under 
the friendly protection of the Windward Islands. 

Before we were ready to go ashore, the steamer 
was surrounded with boats manned by negroes who 
were eager to secure us as passengers, and by canoes 



THE VIRGIN GROUP 29 

and boxes, from which naked dark-skinned youths 
were begging to dive for silver coins. This novel 
method of begging proved very successful, and the 
sides of the ship were lined with passengers eager to 
part with small coin. No sooner did the coins touch 
the water, than the divers would plunge out of their 
frail craft, and follow them down rapidly, getting 
beneath the sinking coins and soon reappearing with 
them in their hands. These black divers paid no 
heed to the huge sharks which we could plainly see 
swimming about the ship, and seemed to enjoy entire 
immunity from them. Sometimes several divers 
would plunge after a single coin and contend 
beneath the surface for its possession, remaining 
under water for so long a time that we thought they 
would surely be drowned. At last they would 
reappear, the victor holding the coin high above his 
head, and the whole group puffing and blowing like 
a school of porpoises. All day they haunted the 
steamer, calling to those who looked over the rail: 
" Father, throw a sixpence to your son ; " " Massa, 
see your boy dive for one shilling ; " " Now, missis, 
see I not 'fraid shark, down I go." At nearly all the 
islands similar black divers surrounded the vessel, 
and afforded great amusement by swimming races 
and diving under the keel, as well as by catching 
coins before they could reach the bottom. As the 



30 CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

water was often so clear that the bottom could be 
seen at a depth of seven fathoms, their movements 
could be plainly traced beneath the surface. 

Before going ashore at St. Thomas some of the 
party rowed over beyond the huge dry dock, to see 
the women dumping coal from a large British steamer 
which had just arrived with a cargo. The vessel 
was alongside a jetty, and a wide gang-plank had 
been rigged from its deck to the pier. Two files 
of women passed up and down this plank constantly, 
one line bearing baskets containing a hundred 
pounds of coal on their heads down the plank, and 
the others balancing the empty baskets as they 
walked up to have them filled. They walked from 
the hips, keeping the body perpendicular, and sang 
a sort of a rhythmical chant as they stepped swiftly 
along to the dumping ground. Black, rough, coarse 
in face and feature beyond description, they seemed 
like huge human beasts of burden. With long arms, 
great prehensile hands and fingers, large, misshapen, 
and unshod feet, with dirty turbans on their heads, 
bare breasts, and rags half concealing their naked- 
ness, they marched up and down the planks for 
hours, a weird and disgusting spectacle. The pay 
is prompt and good, and many women and girls earn 
a living for the family by tliis hard and dirty work. 
They become rude and vulgar as the natural con- 



THE VIEGIN GKOTJP 31 

sequence of such an employment, and when work 
is done they are ready for a drinking bout or 
a satyr's dance. But in these tropical countries 
negro men and women do all the work, and do it 
under the most primitive, difficult, and disagreeable 
conditions. 



V 

ST. THOMAS AND ITS PEOPLE 

LANDING UNDER DIFFICULTIES STRANGE FRUITS AXD 

SHELLS TOBACCO, CIGARS, AND SPIRITS DOMINANT 

RACES RELIGION, WORK, AND WAGES IN ST. THOMAS 

There are no piers or wharves at any of the ports 
in the Windward Islands, except at St. Lucia. 
Freight is, therefore, put on board or removed in 
lighters, and passengers and their luggage are trans- 
ferred in most cases by means of rowboats. At St. 
John's on the island of Antigua and at Port of 
Spain on Trinidad this service was performed by 
a steam launch. With these exceptions, the black 
boatmen had to do the transportation, and very eager 
they were to get the job. But for the forethought 
of the steamship company and the attention of its 
officers we should have been the prey of a howl- 
ing mob of boatmen, to whom the wild Arabs of Tan- 
gier would have been as tame as sucking doves. 
Each passenger was furnished with boat tickets, 
and the purser and his aids summoned the boats 
in order and determined how many each should 
carry. In spite of these preliminaries and limita- 

32 



ST. THOMAS AND ITS PEOPLE 33 

tions, embarkation either in going or coming was 
of the nature of pandemonium and purgatory. Each 
boatman would seek to get the bow of his boat 
nearest the gangway or staircase which hung along- 
side the ship, and as there was often a swell and 
always the chance of tumbling overboard, these 
scenes were sometimes exciting. Yelling and scream- 
ing, pushing and pulling, vociferating the names and 
attractions of their boats, and abusing one another 
in the grossest language, the half-naked negroes 
struggled and bid for passengers. When once these 
were obtained, the tempest of words ceased, and the 
oarsmen pulled with perfect good-nature and much 
deliberation to the landing-place. But though the 
boatmen ceased to quarrel, they never ceased to 
chatter and to either laugh or sing. Some travellers 
have spoken of the silence and melancholy of the 
black races. These quietists do not live in the 
West Indies ; the whole population chatter and laugh 
and make a noise all the time that they are awake, 
and the language which they use at most of the 
islands, in talking with each other, is utterly unin- 
telligible to the ordinary linguist. They speak 
English to the visitor or tourist in all the islands 
except those which belong to France, and under- 
stand him in his own tongue, but between them- 
selves they have a jargon curiously compounded. 



34 CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

Morning had not fully dawned before a fleet of 
small boats, with from one to three negroes, clustered 
around the steamer. From these boats certain privi- 
leged women came on deck and established a bazaar 
under the awning, where they displayed oranges, 
bananas, green cocoanuts, sugar-cane, sapodillas, and 
other fruits, together with skull-caps, mats, and bags 
made of shining seeds, and strings of red and white 
beans, and other West Indian curiosities, which 
were tempting to the eye. In the boats were fruits 
and shells, and long branches of coral and palm tree 
canes, all of which were offered at such low prices 
that the passengers were soon well supplied. 

We landed at St. Thomas in front of a little 
square which was overhung with palm and mango 
trees, and also shaded by lofty ferns, and were at 
once among a strange population. A few white 
men, standing here and there, were entirely swal- 
lowed up by the crowd of black, brown, and yellow 
men and women. The clothing of the crowd was 
brilliant in color, but scanty in amount, the men 
wearing little save short trousers and an old straw or 
felt hat, and the women a single robe of dirty white 
or pink, looped up to the knee, with a turban made 
from a gaudy bandanna handkerchief on the head. 
The children were all dressed in black, just as nature 
made them, with eyes that shone like glass beads, 



ST. THOMAS AND ITS PEOPLE 35 

and white ivory teeth that gleamed and smiled all 
the time as they ran or tumbled about. Some of the 
women were carrying trays full of vegetables, fruit, 
bread, or small wares upon their heads ; others were 
squatting upon their heels, while in front of them 
were little piles of sweet potatoes, peppers, limes, or 
a few sticks of sugar-cane ; others again were hawk- 
ing strings of shells and shining beans called " Job's 
tears," or pieces of coral and sweet cakes. The town 
of Charlotte Amalia is mostly built along one street 
which curves with the shore, and there is a road 
in each direction beyond the shops. The red tiled 
roofs of white houses rise in regular gradations 
from the business street for some distance up the 
mountain side, so that the view from the water 
is picturesque. If one climbs to the hill above 
the town, he obtains a charming picture, of which 
the high-colored villas form the foreground, the 
beautiful bay, with its ships and little islands, 
occupies the middle distance, while beyond, across 
the blue sea, are the shadowy forms of other islands 
like Santa Cruz and Porto Rico. 

The island of St. Thomas belongs to Denmark, 
but if it were not for the fact that there is a little 
band of Danish soldiers here, that the Danish flag 
is hoisted on the public buildings and the dilapi- 
dated fort, and that one gets change for American 



36 CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

dollars in money that is current nowhere else, even 
among diving boys, this ownership might pass un- 
heeded. The business seems to be done largely 
by English, Spanish, and Jews; there is, as I have 
remarked, little planting and much importing; there 
is said to be also a good deal of smuggling from the 
island to the United States, of tobacco, cigars, and 
spirits. Certainly the cigars which come into St. 
Thomas without duty offer a temptation to smug- 
glers. The best Cuban cigars, which sell in New 
York for seventeen and twenty dollars a hundred, 
were purchased by some of our party for eight and 
ten dollars, and we bought delicious bay rum at 
twenty cents a bottle, which costs three or four 
times as much in the United States. 

The population of St. Thomas is about fifteen 
thousand, and they are mostly black. We began to 
see at once the fact, which was impressed upon us 
more and more forcibly at each island, that black 
people inhabit the West Indies, and that the great 
majority of these black people are negroes. There 
are mixed races which have been formed by the union 
of white and colored people, but the black effaces the 
white, and in general where there has been negro blood 
in the alliance it dominates in the result. Black 
people everywhere formed the rule, with white people 
now and then as exceptions. But yet the whites are 



ST. THOMAS AND ITS PEOPLE 37 

the rulers and magnates. They chiefly own the es- 
tates or manage them for absentee owners, they are 
the agents and shippers, and they usually bear them- 
selves with the pride of a conscious superiority 
towards the other races. I say races, for in some 
of the islands there are Caribs, and Hindus, and 
Chinese, besides the Creole descendants of English 
and French and Spanish people. As for religion, the 
Roman Catholic faith pervades the islands. In the 
English possessions there is always a Church of 
England, which embraces the English planters and 
their attorneys, and a few of the West Indians 
and negroes ; also a Wesleyan Methodist church, 
which is nearly, if not quite, composed of black mem- 
bers with a black pastor. Both of these churches 
are well supported in British islands, but the masses 
of the people everywhere are Roman Catholics. In 
the French islands the exceptions are not worth men- 
tioning, and in all, the influence of the priests over 
the colored people is great, and usually beneficent. 
They exhort them to industry, and faithfulness in 
their relations to each other ; they urge marriage, it 
must be said with small success so far as the legal 
and ceremonial contract is concerned, but there is 
much fidelity really practised without oath or 
promise. 

I had heard a great deal of the indolence of the 



38 CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

negroes in the West Indies. I saw little. Taking 
into consideration the low pay for labor — from 
four cents a day, in Barbados, to a shilling or thirty 
cents a day in the best labor market of the 
islands — and considering also climate and the possi- 
bility of easy existence without laboring, it seemed 
to me that the negroes were an industrious class 
of people. They are very strong, and use their 
strength without stint; they have few resources 
when they are not actually at work, and hence 
they lounge about or lie in the sun, and chatter and 
laugh immoderately; but on the plantations, in the 
sugar-houses, in the loading and unloading of ves- 
sels, as porters and servants, and in all menial 
employments, they appeared as industrious, and far 
more faithful than the high-priced laborers of New 
York City or of the farming regions of America with 
which I am acquainted. For downright, wicked 
laziness the full-paid employee on the public works 
of New York City can beat any West Indian negro 
out of sight. The negroes are not thriftless either. 
The savings banks in the islands are full of their 
deposits. In St. John's, Antigua, the savings bank 
holds forty thousand pounds. One-quarter of this 
belongs to negroes, and out of nineteen hundred 
depositors they represent more than one-half. This is 
but an example of what is true of other islands also. 



ST. THOMAS AND ITS PEOPLE 39 

Most of the white people have come to the West 
Indies to make a fortune and intend to return to 
Europe or America to spend it ; they are not careful 
to contribute to the interests of their temporary- 
home, except so far as these bear upon their ultimate 
prosperity. To this fact is due in a large degree a 
deterioration of morals and personal character among 
the black people, who are naturally imitative and are 
powerfully influenced by the superior race ; but they 
are very much better than they have been portrayed 
by careless and often immoral writers and travellers. 

St. Thomas has a public library and hospital, few 
sights except the robber castles and the house where 
Santa Anna lived when he was banished as a traitor 
from Mexico; and its great interest centres in the 
arrival and presence of ships of war, for which it is a 
favorite winter resort, and of other vessels which put 
into the port for repairs. It had given us our first taste 
of life in the Caribbean Islands, and we were ready 
for new experiences. Laden with bay rum, and 
island postage stamps, which had a boom at the time 
of our visit, with Carib baskets filled with green 
cocoanuts, sapodillas, soursops, green oranges of de- 
licious odor, and bunches of tiny bananas, we made 
our way back to the Madiana. The cargo had been 
unloaded, the hatches were on, and at four o'clock 
the anchor was out of its bed, the vessel had swung 



40 CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

around and was headed for Santa Cruz, which could 
be dimly seen upon the horizon forty miles away due 
south. The rich green of the mountain deepened to 
purple as we moved out of the harbor, the picture of 
the town gradually diminished till it was like a view 
from the wrong end of an opera glass, and the war- 
ships became white dots on the black water. More 
and more faint the outline of St. Thomas faded as 
the sun dropped, and night came quickly, recalling 
the oft-quoted lines of Coleridge's "Ancient Mar- 
iner " : — 

" The sun's rim dips, the stars rush out, 
At one stride comes the dark." 

Then the moon appeared, clear and full, and all the 
sea glowed in her silver light. A gentle breeze 
ruffled the waters, the air was pure and balmy, and 
we were in a region of terrestrial delight. 



VI 

SANTA CRUZ 

COLDEST DAT FOR YEARS DRINKING FRESH COCOANUTS 

SUGAR CANE PLANTATIONS HOW SUGAR IS MADE 

BY A NEW ENGLANDER ON BOARD THE CRUISER 

NEW YORK 

Santa Cruz is but a few hours' sail from St. 
Thomas, and there are schooners which taking advan- 
tage of the trade winds make the run back and forth 
several times a week. We left St. Thomas between 
four and five o'clock and by eight had made the run 
of forty miles and cast anchor in the roadstead. 
Santa Cruz is the largest of the Virgins, being 
twenty-five miles long and five miles wide. It sus- 
tains a population of about twenty-five thousand, and 
though the island belongs to Denmark the people 
speak English, and give no signs of their nationality 
beyond their little garrison and its flag. As soon as 
the anchor was down, the young men of the party 
went ashore. They returned with glowing accounts 
of a dramatic festival which they had attended in a 
Moravian church, where amateurs were entertaining 

41 , 



42 CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

five hundred people in a building designed for three 
hundred. As the waits were long and both actors 
and audience were negroes, the atmosphere soon 
became intolerable for the New Yorkers. They had 
seen and heard enough, however, to awaken our 
curiosity and they brought back a band of negro 
minstrels in a boat, who made night hideous. The 
next morning was an epoch in the history of the 
island. The thermometer marked sixty-seven de- 
grees at eight o'clock. This is unprecedented for 
Santa Cruz, where during the winter the mercury 
usually ranges from seventy-six degrees to eighty- 
two degrees, and the climate is very equable. The 
oldest inhabitant — I regret that I failed to obtain 
his age — declared that it was the coldest winter 
day for many years, and lie feared that they would 
have snow! We had just read a meagre telegram 
from New York, which stated that there was a 
blizzard there with thermometer several degrees 
below zero ; so buttoning up our linen jackets, 
we thanked God that we were not in New York 
but amid the winter scenes of the West Indies. 

By daylight the island of Santa Cruz seemed most 
attractive. It is not so abrupt and severe as some of 
its associates, though it bears abundant evidences of 
volcanic origin. It consists of a multitude of little 
peaks and rounded hills, with ravines and valleys 



SANTA CRUZ 43 

between them, and trends off towards the south into 
lowland plains and a tongue of land and sands. The 
mountains, where uncultivated, are colored a bluish 
green, but where the sugar-cane is largely grown, the 
color of the country is so light and rich a green that 
it seems as if opening spring had just spread her man- 
tle over the land. Yet the cane is all ready to be cut, 
and we saw loads of it being carted to the mills. The 
colors of hillsides and savannas are beautifully con- 
trasted on this island; there are long avenues of 
cocoa palms, with trunks rising fifty feet like pol- 
ished marble shafts, and then bursting out into a mir- 
acle of waving foliage and nests full of golden-green 
cocoanuts. I offered a negro boy a sixpence, and he 
at once " shinned " up the smooth pillar and brought 
me down two of the great green globes. I opened 
one end with my knife and drank a delicious, cool 
draught of sweet and juicy liquid. It was neither 
water nor sirup; it was simply "the milk in the 
cocoanut " ! 

There are two towns on the island, Frederikstad 
and Christiansted, which are not known by these 
names, but are generally called " West End " and 
"Basse End." Our view of Frederikstad from the 
vessel had prepared us for a beautiful place. It has 
some buildings with arched fronts and many white 
and pink and yellow houses, half hidden among 



44 CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

strange tamarind and palm and mango trees, but 
when we got ashore the vision vanished. The 
arcades were clumsy and crumbling and dirty ; 
the streets unpaved and irregular, and the cabins 
where the negroes lived were far from picturesque. 
Throughout the islands these cabins are small and 
inexpensive, and often dilapidated and ruinous in 
the extreme. The shanties which are built along the 
lines of new railroads in the United States for work- 
men, are nicer than the majority of these negro 
houses. They are built of wood, and usually con- 
sist of one or two rooms, in which a large family is 
huddled at night. The people spend most of the 
daytime out of doors, and meals are prepared in the 
open air. There is no glass in the windows and 
wooden shutters serve to keep out the wind and 
rain. The foundations are rarely more than a few 
posts or large stones. A tempest would easily over- 
turn these cabins, and they are placed so near to- 
gether in the towns that a fire would naturally burn 
a great number before it could be put out. When, 
therefore, we hear that a hurricane or a fire has de- 
stroyed several hundred houses in a West India island, 
it is not necessary to conclude that a vast amount 
of property has been destroyed. The buildings serve 
the purposes of a shelter and a rendezvous for the 
family, and if destroyed, they can be easily replaced. 



SANTA CRUZ 45 

Santa Cruz is covered with sugar-cane plantations. 
They climb the hills and crown many of them, and 
skirt precipices, and sweep their waves of golden 
green down to kiss the white sea-waves. The sugar 
interest is dreadfully depressed now, but the plant 
for making sugar is here, the capital has been 
invested, the land has been given up to the sugar-cane 
culture ; what can the planters do ? Beet sugar, 
and the low price of sugar in England and in the 
United States, competition and hard times have 
joined to render sugar planting unprofitable ; all the 
planters feel poor, while many think that they are 
ruined. Others, more sensible, have awakened to 
the folly of cultivating only one staple, and are try- 
ing to change their plans for the future ; some have 
kept right on in spite of losses, in the hope that bet- 
ter times will come to help them. The emancipation 
of the slaves was a terrible blow to the prosperity 
of the West Indies, and they have never recovered 
from the entire revolution in labor which this change 
produced. The negroes are hard-working men and 
women, but it is after a fashion of their own. They 
will work only when and as they please. Such 
labor is unfavorable to regular production, and un- 
profitable where competition is keen and margins are 
small. The sugar question of the West India islands 
is one of the most serious which now confronts com- 



46 CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEBS 

merce, and it demands careful study, judicious prac- 
tical treatment, and wise legislation for its solution. 

Meanwhile the islands are still covered with the 
green fields of cane, among which run superb roads, 
beneath avenues of cocoa palms. Drives in the island 
of Santa Cruz, over these roads, led us into valleys 
where there were tamarind trees delicate leaved as 
our locust, and giants called flamboyants, leafless 
but all aflame with scarlet flowers ; and the silk Cot- 
tonwood with enormous misshapen roots and long 
horizontal branches, on which grew a multitude of 
parasites and air plants. Here, too, were the curi- 
ously formed frangipani, with hooked or claw-like 
branches, the banana tree with clustering fruit and 
its huge purple and cone-like blossom. Flowers of 
all colors and shapes, from the fragrant white jasmine 
to the yellow and red cacti, adorned the roadsides. 
Black pelicans floated on the sea, or sailed in long 
and continuous flight through the air; the groves 
were never without modest music from numbers of 
elegantly dressed birds, and innumerable brilliant 
butterflies harmonized in the beauty of their coloring 
with the superb flowers upon which they fed. 

It was at Santa Cruz that we first visited a large 
sugar plantation. Driving on a fine hard road, 
neither muddy nor dusty, beneath a noble avenue of 
cocoa palms, which bordered fields of sugar-cane, we 



SANTA CRTJZ 47 

came in due time to the sugar mills of Bartram 
Brothers, one of the largest establishments on the 
island. It is under the care and management of 
Colonel Blackwood, a retired Maine sailor, who 
knows the West Indies and the Spanish Main by- 
heart. After many voyages he has cast anchor here, 
and is doing his best to make these fields and mills 
remunerative. Thus far, by introducing new machin- 
ery, by keeping up with the times, and by untiring 
industry and personal supervision, he has made them 
pay, but the present outlook is almost discouraging 
even to such sagacious industry. The colonel showed 
us the processes of growth and manufacture in detail 
and with extreme courtesy. The cane is planted on 
prepared ground in wide rows, in the fall, and grows 
to a great height in a year's time. It must be hoed 
and kept free from weeds. The resemblance of a 
cane field to a closely planted field of Indian corn is 
striking. When it has attained its growth, black 
men and women cut the cane with a machete or cut- 
lass, trim off the leaves and pack it into carts, which 
are drawn by oxen or mules to the weigh-house, which 
usually stands close to the mill. As soon as the cane 
has been weighed, it is pitched upon a moving 
inclined plane, which carries it up to the cutter and 
squeezing rollers. These seize it, and the sweet 
juice, colored a dirty brown, comes out beneath the 



48 CRUISING AMONG THE CABIBBEES 

rollers, and is conducted to and through a variety of 
strainers, and boilers, and vacuum pans, and wringers, 
until it appears in brightest sugar crystals, though 
still very brown. It is then placed in canvas bags of 
three hundred and two pounds each, and marked to 
be shipped for refining. The molasses, which is 
sweet refuse from the boiling, is taken off into tanks 
during the process and barrelled. The waste cane, 
called " bagasse " is dried in the open air and used 
for fuel. One of the labor-saving processes invented 
by Colonel Blackwood enables him to burn the 
bagasse just as it comes from the rollers. The whole 
of this establishment is run by steam power, and the 
machinery is most expensive and elaborate. Many 
mills are simple, the power being obtained from a 
windmill and the machinery being very primitive. 
These mills in good times have made as fair com- 
parative profits for their owners as the more costly 
ones on account of the small cost of running them, but 
when times are bad and competition is keen they can- 
not make money. Everywhere upon the islands are 
abandoned plantations, and buildings going to decay. 
This is due to many causes, among which are the 
absentee system of ownership, lack of thrift in man- 
agement, extravagant modes of living, the unreliable 
character of labor. But recently, added to all these 
reasons has been the competition of the beet root sub- 



SANTA CRUZ 49 

sidized sugar of Germany, and the low price of the 
cane sugar in almost all civilized countries. One 
owner told me that his estate and mill, which three 
years ago paid him more than fifty thousand dollars' 
profit, would this year hardly pay expenses. The is- 
lands have been so entirely given up to sugar cultiva- 
tion that it will be years before they can recover from 
the great losses which these hard times involve, or be- 
fore they can raise up new industries to take the place 
of those which have failed. 

A New Haven shipowner, Captain Perkins, who 
has settled in a charming part of Santa Cruz after 
more than a hundred voyages to the Caribbees, 
kindly invited us to his house and treated us most 
hospitably. His piazza looks upon the turquoise sea, 
over which our White Squadron was tracing its 
course in lines of foam, as the gunboats steamed 
towards the roadstead ; the garden was full of tropi- 
cal fruits and flowers, and at the foot of the hill on 
which the house stood, were some of the most majes- 
tic mahogany and cottonwood and thibet trees that I 
have ever seen. The afternoon passed rapidly away 
in pleasant visiting, and before the evening gun was 
fired, some of us went on board of the cruiser New 
York. We were courteously welcomed by Admiral 
Meade and shown over the vessel by the chaplain, 
Rev. Mr. Clark, who is a Methodist Episcopal clergy- 



60 CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

man hailing from Calais, Me., and has been at the 
Annapolis Naval Academy and in the navy for 
twenty-two years. 

Some of the party had taken a long drive and 
dined at a vast hotel at Christiansted or Basse End, 
the capital of the island, which they described as 
much superior in every way to West End, but the 
island seemed attractive to all wherever they had 
dined or strolled, and Santa Cruz is considered to be 
one of the most healthful and desirable places for 
residence or resort in the West Indies. 



VII 

FROM SABA TO ST. KITT'S 

BOTTOM ON TOP SHIP BUILDING ON A MOUNTAIN A 

PENNSYLVANIA SCHOOL SHIP MOUNT MISERY AND 

MONKEY HILL — WONDERFUL PISHES BANYANS AND 

PALMISTES 

Sailing from Santa Cruz, we came with a 
straight course to Saba, St. Eustatius, and St. Kitt's. 
The two first named are lofty cones, the craters of 
volcanoes whose fires have gone out. Saba is sur- 
rounded with rocky precipices. It rises sheer out 
of the sea more than a thousand feet, while the 
top of the cone is nearly three thousand feet high, 
and in many places quite inaccessible. The land- 
ing is effected at a rocky cove over breakers that 
shoot the boat towards the stony beach with the 
force of a catapult. Then comes a climb up a path 
well named the "ladder," consisting of steps cut 
in the rock, an ascent of eight hundred feet, so 
steep that visitors must be helped up with ropes 
over parts of the way. This difficult path leads 
to the town of "Bottom," which certainly seems 

51 



52 CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

like a misnomer after such a climb, but it occupies 
the level surface of a vast crater of an extinct vol- 
cano. The town is surrounded by hills, with one 
opening to the east, and another to the west, through 
which the inhabitants reach the sea. Everything 
has to be transported from the shore to the town 
on the heads of the people. Each man carries one 
hundred pounds up these steep cliffs, taking his 
load three miles with a perpendicular ascent of 
thirteen hundred feet. There is said to be on Saba 
the largest mine of pure, cool sulphur in this hem- 
isphere. Its owner was murdered in New York, 
a few years ago, and the mine has not been worked 
since. 

In the quaint town of Bottom live two thousand 
Dutch people. They all have fair skins and rosy 
complexions, with some freckles, but little tan, 
while there is a predominance of tow heads among 
the juvenile population. The whites outnumber the 
blacks three to one, and true to their Dutch ances- 
try, they are sailors and boat builders. Up in this 
mountain crater they build the stanchest fishing 
boats that sail the Caribbean Sea, and when these 
are finished, they lower them down the side of the 
mountain with ropes and launch them in the ocean. 
The Dutch have always been famous for overcoming 
obstacles. They love to accomplish what seems 



FEOM SABA TO ST. KITT'S 53 

impossible ; and here on Saba, an almost inaccessible 
island, where no timber grows, where there is no 
dock and no harbor, and not even a smooth beach, 
they have established a shipyard and from hence 
have sent their vessels built in a mountain through- 
out the West Indies. 

St. Eustatius is a great volcanic cone, whose lip 
has been broken down on the northern side, the 
land falling aAvay into low hills and meadow land 
which makes up far the greater part of the island. 
The island is a Dutch possession, but thinly inhab- 
ited, and without trade or importance. It was once 
held by Great Britain in the days when Rodney 
brought all these islands under English control, but 
it was inadequately defended, and erelong fell an 
easy prize to French and Dutch adventurers. In 
old times its caves and secret valleys served as hid- 
ing-places for pirates and smugglers, and it is not 
entirely free from suspicion at the present day. 
It is a great resort also for picnic parties from St. 
Kitt's, and judging from the condition in which a 
party returned, some of whose members paid a visit 
to our ship after their day's outing, there must still 
be stores of spirits in the crater and a readiness to 
share them with all comers. One of those visitors 
was a prominent planter who had just returned 
from travelling in Europe. With his "attorney," 



54 CRUISING AMONG THE CAMBBEES 

as they call the managers of the estates here, and 
other friends, he was determined to appropriate the 
Madiana and make a night of it on board. The 
captain had to be called, before the inebriates could 
be induced to enter their boats. They went vowing 
in thick and incoherent language that they would 
ship no sugar by a line that denied them the hos- 
pitalities of its vessels. Next morning, however, 
they were more sensible and apologized for their 
rudeness. Drinking is not done upon the sly in 
the West Indies. The first sign that met my gaze 
on landing at St. Thomas was "Rum Shop" in a 
conspicuous place and style, and the same name is 
given to the many places in the various islands 
where rum and other drinks are to be had. We 
saw abundant evidence of the effects of rum drink- 
ing, though these were mostly secondary, intoxicated 
persons not being numerous, except at Martinique 
during the Mardi Gras celebrations. 

It was early on a February morning that we 
sighted the island of St. Kitt's, and after skirting the 
coast for an hour or two, came to anchor off Basse 
Terre, the principal town. There were a number of 
vessels moored in the port, among them the Pennsyl- 
vania School Ship Saratoga, with about ninety boys 
on board. They were a fine set of young fellows, 
under good training for a maritime life. The gov- 



FKOM SABA TO ST. KITT's 55 

eminent of the United States is doing a wise thing 
in fostering this kind of education. These lads will 
not only supply officers for our increasing merchant 
vessels, but will have that fundamental knowledge 
which will fit them for emergency service in our 
navy. 

When the sun rose, we found ourselves in a beau- 
tiful curving basin of indigo-colored water, which 
was breaking into white lines of surf upon a yellow 
beach. Along the beach, and for a mile inland, lay 
the picturesque town of Basse Terre, its red and 
white roofs appearing among tall cocoanut and cab- 
bage palms, breadfruit and mango trees. Beyond 
the town, on gradual slopes, were many light green 
sugar plantations, each having a tall chimney and a 
group of white stone buildings in the midst. Then 
the mountains rose, dark green and purple in color ; 
rugged, and broken into wild ridges and ravines for 
several thousand feet, till they met the sky with an 
edge like a knife-blade, while a pyramid of black 
lava formed the summit of Mount Misery. Upon 
this lofty peak and often upon its companion, called 
Monkey Hill, a mass of vaporous clouds hangs nearly 
all the time. In a drive around the island we once 
saw this cloud cap lifted for half an hour, when only 

" Precipitous, black, jagged rocks, 
Forever shattered and the same forever," 



56 CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

stood revealed. The contrast between the emerald 
billows of verdure which tossed up from the low- 
lands, and this infernal crest, was striking and sug- 
gestive. The lava, and sulphur, and ashes, which 
have been cast out from the crater, and which have 
formed its slopes, and are still washed down to the 
ocean shores, have made the island fertile and beau- 
tiful. Thus the hideous ogre is changed into a fair}'- 
godmother, or in more pious phrase, our bountiful 
Creator is always and everywhere 

"from seeming evil, still educing good." 

Every morning after breakfast we landed on some 
of the islands, to ride or drive or visit or study the 
people and their customs. The struggles of the 
negro boatmen for the privilege and profit of row- 
ing us ashore, became in time no more exciting than 
the cries and gestures of the cabmen in front of any 
great railway station in America; and we chose 
" Champagne Charlie " or " Black-eyed Susan," with 
supreme indifference, and were rowed ashore over 
the tossing waves to a long wharf and so came to 
the sandy beach. Here was a curious sight. Be- 
sides the lighters and gangs of longshoremen who 
were at work upon hogsheads of sugar and hogs- 
heads of molasses and barrels of rum, and the rasre'ed 
negroes, with ruinous carts and raw-boned horses 



FBOM SABA TO ST. KITT'S 57 

and starved donkeys, there were the fishing boats 
which had just arrived with the products of their 
nets. These were spread out upon the sand, and a 
more brilliant piscatorial picture I never saw before, 
but such variety and beauty in a fish market I saw 
again and again in the markets of the Windward 
Islands. The fish were of all sizes and shapes, from a 
hideous shark to the graceful and beautiful bonita. 
There were the parrot fish, a gray-blue and yellow fish 
that looked like a drowned "Polly," with watery eye ; 
the gar-fish, two feet long, as slender as a lance- 
blade, clothed in gleaming silver, and with a long 
black bill like a bird's, which is set with rows of fine 
pointed teeth; there was the butter fish, and the 
redsnapper, and the gauze-winged flying fish, and 
the beautiful angel fish, with its delicate arrange- 
ment of scales of pearl and silver and bronze and 
gold. Curious eels of vast size lay coiled like ser- 
pents in boxes, and there were lobsters large enough 
to take a small darky in their claws and walk off 
with him, and crabs of all sizes and colors, and forty 
other strange and wonderful dwellers in the sea. 
Dozens of men and women, squatting or kneeling 
in the sand, were chaffering and chattering, and 
handling and weighing, and selling and buying. 
I saw nothing but copper coin used in the purchases, 
and when I offered half a crown for change, in pay- 



58 CRUISING AMONG THE CAEIBBEES 

ment for two breadfruit, which cost a half-penny, 
there was a sensation among the dealers equal to 
that caused upon the Stock Exchange in New York, 
by a large and sudden exportation of gold. 

Some writers say, that this chief town of St. Kitt's 
is formal, and that its population is not picturesque, 
but they must have seen it in rain or mist, or during 
a hot noontide, when the Kittefonians, as they call 
themselves, were resting out of sight. It is really 
a bright and busy town, with many neat streets of 
well-built wooden houses on one-story stone founda- 
tions, a handsome square containing a wonderful ban- 
yan tree, a number of fine palmistes, thibet, and other 
trees, and beds full of gorgeous hibiscus flowers and 
fragrant mignonette, and a multitude of plants and 
shrubs. Within the enclosures, which contain some 
of the best houses, are gardens full of flowers and 
fruits, where one could lounge under wide-spreading 
branches, through which the cooling breath of the 
trade winds finds its way from ten o'clock in the 
morning till long after dark. St. Kitt's does not 
afford such varieties of color and costume as are 
found in the French islands, but you will see many 
tall and comely women, walking with erect figure 
and attractive dignity which comes from carrying 
water-jars and other loads upon the head. The 
men are not all black ; some are yellow with 



FROM SABA TO ST. KITT'S 59 

straight raven hair and eyes like black beads which 
indicate Spanish or Portuguese descent, but the 
majority are black as a coal, and look blacker still, 
because they are clad, if clad at all, in garments 
which were originally made of white material. 
They delight in the sugar-cane, which they gnaw 
constantly and vary with tobacco smoking, and they 
are as fond of all kinds of fruit as an Englishman is 
of various sorts of meat. At St. Kitt's we ate sapo- 
dillas, which have been inelegantly called " sweet 
mud " ; mangoes which are of a beautiful color and 
contain a creamy substance of a slightly resinous 
taste ; guavas, small yellow globes full of seeds and 
sugary pulp ; soursops, a fruit like a large prickly 
pear, full of a substance which would be familiar to 
lovers of ice-cream soda, and great purple raspberries 
rather lacking in flavor. Baked breadfruit was 
pronounced a valuable addition to those products 
which can be used as vegetables or for the stock of 
puddings and other desserts, while yams and sweet 
potatoes, and plantains, and bananas, and all sorts of 
oranges, were familiar to us, though not in the pro- 
fusion and at the small cost for which they can be 
had in the West Indies. 



VIII 
LIFE ON ST. KITT'S 

THE ABORIGINES, THE SETTLERS AND THEIR WARS 

CHURCHES OP ST. KITT'S A STORY OF DEAF MUTES 

PHOTOGRAPHS, COINS, AND CURIOS A DRIVE AROUND 

THE ISLAND AND A NEGRO WEDDING 

Among the pleasant acquaintances formed at 
St. Kitt's was that of Captain George Locke and 
his amiable wife. The captain lives on the island 
in the service of the Quebec Steamship Company, 
and he accompanied our party on the southern tour 
through the islands as far as Trinidad. His house 
is in town, but stands in a garden with palm trees 
and clustering vines and an ancient rose bush whose 
branches climb over a long veranda and adorn it, 
with great blossoms of the "cloth of gold." From 
him we gathered much useful information as we 
sailed along, and some of the facts about the island 
of St. Kitt's will be of interest before we resume 
our voyage. The island is oval-shaped, being thir- 
teen miles long, from three to six miles in width, 
and contains an area of about forty-four thousand 

60 



LIFE ON ST. KITT'S Gl 

acres, three-fourths of which is under cultivation. 
The uncultivated part is mostly embraced in the 
Conarrhee hills, the precipitous crags of Mount 
Misery, and a long lowland stretching out to sea 
upon the southeast. The remainder of the island 
is well tilled and fertile. 

The aborigines were Carib Indians, a sturdy and 
warlike people who inhabited the island in 1493, 
when Columbus discovered and gave it his name. 
Tradition declares that he was moved to call it St. 
Christopher, because one mountain seemed to him 
to be bearing a smaller mountain on its shoulder as 
the Saint Christopher is represented in early art 
carrying the infant Saviour. The English, when 
the island came into their possession, changed its 
name to St. Kitt's. But the Carib name was 
Liamuiga, " the fertile," a designation which is more 
beautiful and appropriate than either of the others. 
The Spanish discoverers did not settle here, and it 
was not until after the Pilgrims had landed at 
Plymouth Rock, that fifteen Englishmen took posses- 
sion of St. Christopher. A party of Frenchmen 
came about the same time, and their common danger 
from the Caribs led English and French for once 
to join forces, massacre the natives, and divide their 
conquest. The English settled at the northwestern 
end called Sandy Point, and the French at Basse 



62 CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

Terre on the southwest. But the league thus 
cemented in blood was soon broken, and English 
and French quarrelled for more than half a century, 
till finally in 1690 the English mustered three thou- 
sand armed men, and eleven men-of-war and other 
vessels, drove the French out of the island, and 
exiled them to Martinique. The island has been 
in English hands ever since, but while Sandy Point 
is still a small village, Basse Terre has about seven 
thousand inhabitants and contains the Government 
House and other public buildings and a number of 
churches. We attended service in three, the Roman 
Catholic church opposite the Botanic Garden, where 
the congregation was almost entirely composed of 
colored and negro people ; the Wesleyan church 
with a similar congregation but having more of 
the negro element, and the Church of England, 
whose services were held in a large and handsome 
stone structure well filled with white people, with 
here and there a colored person, but few if any 
negroes. The distinction between colored persons 
and negroes is very marked and is always insisted 
upon. Colored people may associate with whites 
upon terms of equality, but the negro still bears 
the curse of his lineage and is reckoned as belong- 
ing to a servile race. 

The service at the Church of England was 



LIFE ON ST. KITT'S 63 

conducted by a venerable archdeacon who seemed 
to be eccentric. He omitted parts of the service 
without any reason, and mixed up other parts, and 
his enunciation was so strange as to seem ludi- 
crous ; he smiled derisively and wagged his head 
to and fro till some of our ritualists in the party 
became indignant. But our tendency to mirth or 
anger was changed to pity when we learned after 
service that the poor rector had been paralyzed 
and was struggling bravely to retain his place and 
perform his duties. I recalled the story of the 
lady who had gone to Notre Dame in Paris to 
hear a celebrated priest. She found one chapel 
occupied by a congregation and presuming that she 
was in the right place, kneeled for a few moments 
in prayer. On rising from her knees, she saw that 
the preacher was making an address, but she could 
not hear a word. She tried to listen, but no sound 
reached her ear. Frightened at what she supposed 
was a sudden deafness on her part, she rushed into 
the main body of the church, where she met a 
friend, who seeing that something was wrong asked: 
"What is the matter?" "Thank God, I have 
recovered my hearing," exclaimed the lady ; " I 
feared that I should be deaf for life." Upon hear- 
ing the story, her friend informed her that she had 
entered the chapel where one of the successors of 



64 CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

the famous teacher De L'Epe'e was conducting a 
service for deaf-mutes ! It is not always safe to 
draw conclusions from appearances, especially when 
travelling in foreign lands. 

One of the objects of interest to the modern 
traveller is the photographer. Next to the pleasure 
of carrying one's own camera, and choosing the 
point of view, is that of overhauling the local photog- 
grapher's stock. At St. Kitt's, Mr. Lyon, who fills 
this post, is a character. He has lived long in the 
Windward Islands, knows all their beauties and 
salient points, is an enthusiastic artist, and also an 
untiring collector of coins and curios and postage 
stamps. It was a curious experience to find in this 
far-away island some of the rarest Roman and Greek 
coins and things that antiquarians and amateurs long 
to possess. Mr. Lyon was proud to sIioav his 
treasures and to share his pleasure with a group of 
eager travellers. I have nothing to say about the 
hotel facilities and accommodations at Basse Terre, 
except that we greatly preferred the private hospi- 
tality of the inhabitants to any public provision, and 
were thankful here as elsewhere, that there was a 
French chef on board the Madiana and stewards who 
knew the art of serving a meal. 

In good company, I twice drove about St. Kitt's. 
A fine road runs from Basse Terre towards the 



LIFE ON ST. KITT'S 65 

southeast, gradually ascending from the anchorage, 
till the broad Atlantic with its breakers on the rocks 
and its far-extending billows, greets the eye. From 
the crest of the island the road traverses the wind- 
ward shore, sometimes climbing a hill and anon 
sweeping down almost to the foaming waves. Run- 
ning northward along the entire eastern side, a 
superb ocean view meets the eye upon the right 
hand, and a mingled landscape of sugar-cane planta- 
tions, dense forests, and ragged cliffs is upon the left. 
We visited a sugar mill of the simplest sort on one 
of these drives. The work was done by negroes, 
oxen, wind, and water, and the sugar which was 
turned out was the cheapest sort of muscovado. 
The owner lives in Scotland and is perhaps content 
with a very moderate profit upon his investment, 
and in these times he will be lucky if he does not 
pay out more than he receives, even with such primi- 
tive methods and machines. 

On another drive we witnessed a marriage in the 
Episcopal church of St. Paul's, near Sandy Point. 
A large population had turned out, and the roads 
were so full that we inquired whether it was a fete 
day, and were told that a wedding was at hand. So 
we made our way to the church and joined the com- 
pany. The bride was tall and large-limbed, and as 
black as night. She was dressed in white lawn, with 



66 CKUISING AMONG THE CABIBBEES 

a large necklace, made of great glass beads like pearls, 
around her neck, and a huge white satin bonnet on 
her head. A medium-sized negro girl, who also wore 
a white muslin dress gayly bedecked with cherry- 
ribbons, was the bridesmaid, and the groom was a 
tall and powerful black man, in a gray suit, white 
waistcoat, and blue necktie. After the knot was 
tied, the party were called upon to sign the register. 
This operation occupied nearly a quarter of an hour, 
and was accompanied with much twisting of the 
tongue into the corner of the mouth, and difficult 
adjustment of the fingers so as to bring fingers and 
pen and page into perfect unison. At last the signa- 
tures were made, the minister got his fee, and the 
happy pair were driven off in a rickety coach with a 
raw-boned team and a charioteer clothed in white 
linen, followed by the cheers and blessings of a wait- 
ing crowd. They must have gone to Basse Terre, 
thirteen miles distant, upon their bridal tour, for this 
is the longest journey one can take on the island. 
The rector told us that such occasions were rare 
among the negoes, as the women preferred an 
arrangement in which, they were left free to leave 
their partners, if they proved to be lazy or unkind; 
he said also, that those who were legally married 
were treated with more respect among their own 
people as well as by others. At the church and 



LIFE ON ST. KITT'S 67 

along the road we were met by men and girls with 
missionary boxes, who were collecting funds for 
benevolent uses, and though some doubted whether 
the shillings which they gave would reach further 
than the pockets of the solicitors, most of the party 
were charitable in their judgment as well as in their 
gifts. 

On this drive we passed through the villages of 
Caro and St. Paul's, and embarked again at Sandy 
Point, where" the steamer had come for some bags 
of sugar. There is no place to lunch or lodge on 
the island, outside of Basse Terre, and though the 
planters are doubtless hospitable enough to entertain 
visitors, the days when any traveller felt free to 
make himself at home without an invitation, have 
passed away. About midnight we steamed away 
from St. Kitt's by the light of the Southern Cross, 
which was now becoming familiar, and a host of 
other new and brilliant stars which gemmed the 
firmament. 



IX 
A REAL WEST INDIAN ISLAND 

BEAUTIES OF SEA AND SHORE DROWSY OLD TOWN 

IN DATS OF AULD LANG SYNE A FOUNTAIN OF 

YOUTH BIRTHPLACE OF HAMILTON AND MARRIAGE 

PLACE OF NELSON 

One of the most intelligent and agreeable of 
my companions in our winter tour among the "Wind- 
ward Islands was Mr. Alfred M. Williams. He was 
one of the men who helped to make the Neio York 
Tribune in the days of Horace Greeley, and has since 
edited that able and influential New England news- 
paper, the Providence Journal. Mr. Williams is a 
lover of literature and of old books ; a poet and an 
author, as well as an editor. His last book, is an 
interesting collection of poetical folk-lore, under the 
title, "Studies in Folk-Song and Popular Poetry." 
My friend became enamored of the beautiful island 
of Nevis, which he visited while the Madiana lay 
at St. Kitt's, and which I visited with others upon 
the return voyage. Mr. Williams has kindly given 
me permission to print his poetic and vivacious 



A REAL WEST INDIAN ISLAND 69 

descriptions of Nevis, and I am sure that my readers 
will join me in thanks for his courtesy. 

" The most distinctly West Indian island which we 
have yet seen, our port of call including St. Thomas, 
St. Croix, and St. Kitt's, is the little island of Nevis. 
It is not in the regular routes of the steamers, 
but is gained in an hour and a half's sail by a small 
boat from Basse Terre, St. Kitt's. The morning was 
a delightful one, the sky full of soft, fleecy clouds, 
which now and then darkened into mist and rain, 
sweeping in sheets of falling water over the wine- 
dark sea, and again lifting into white veils upon 
the mountain tops and letting the sun shine in 
unclouded lustre upon the sparkling vegetation and 
the sea, which was turned by its caress to the 
richest turquoise blue. The white gulls screamed 
with that voice which is the very accent of the 
ocean, as they swept about in what seemed like 
a madness of activity, and now and then a greater 
pelican would wing his heavy way above the sea. 
The little steamer coasted along the shore of St. 
Kitt's, with its high hills apparently covered with 
unbroken forest, and then played and rolled through 
the heavy Avaves that swept through the channel, 
which divides the island from Nevis. Nevis is 
dominated by a lofty hill, which looks down on 
the open roadstead. This morning it wore a light 



70 CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

gauze veil of vapor around its summit, but down 
its sides there were patches of the soft green verdure 
of the cane fields, and the darker woods were bathed 
in the sunlight. As we approached the shore the 
white foam of the breakers was seen combing far 
up on the beach, and the heavy thunder of their 
fall gave a strong symphony of ocean music. The 
sea was so rough that the steamer could not ap- 
proach the wharf, and the few passengers were 
transferred to the shore by the skilful hands of 
the negro boatmen. 

" The town of Charlestown, which is the capital of 
Nevis, is a small hamlet of a few hundred in- 
habitants, and is hardly more than a single street, 
stretching along the open beach. On the sea front 
there is a single line of cocoa palms lifting their 
feathered heads high in air, and beneath them are 
the huts of the negro fishermen, with their boats 
hauled up on the beach and their nets drying in the 
sun. The town is made of quaint old houses of 
the ancient period of West Indian architecture, with 
mossy stone walls and tiled roofs. There are no 
signs of any business except a few shops of general 
merchandise, and an air of gentle decay broods over 
the whole place. There is a little public garden 
of a few feet square, in which roses and rho- 
dodendrons were in bloom, and around it were a 



A REAL WEST INDIAN ISLAND 71 

few negro women with cakes and vegetables for 
sale. 

" The white population were few, but in amends the 
negroes were many. Strong black wenches passed 
by with heavy burdens on their heads, walking with 
that firm, solid, and graceful step which comes from 
the habit of carrying burdens, with only the move- 
ment of the hips, the bust and head remaining 
perfectly steady and upright. All were smiling and 
happy, showing their white teeth, and ready to 
respond with a. soft 'good m-a-a-wning ' in the 
sweet, drawling Creole accent. Some were carry- 
ing baskets of bright-colored West Indian fish of 
strange shapes and abnormal aspect, and others great 
burdens of vegetables, boxes and loads of a very 
miscellaneous character. One would not have been 
surprised to see a negress with a kerosene lamp 
or a mirror on her head, or, if there were a square 
piano on the island, to see it borne with a steady 
step by four of these women caryatides. The men 
seemed to have little to do, and to be doing that 
without any energy. They idled on street corners 
and talked with a conversation heavily punctuated 
with guffaws, or munched sugar-cane in sleek and 
shiny content. Shoes, it is needless to say, were 
unknown, and garments were reduced to the sim- 
plest articles of necessity. Altogether, Charlestown 



72 CRUISING AMONG THE CAEIBBEES 

seemed sunk in a gentle and tranquil sleep, its 
slumber soothed with the tranquil booming of the 
surf, and steeping in the warmth of the kindly 
sun. 

"But Charlestown was once as wealthy and lively 
a place for its size as any in the West Indies. In 
the days when a plantation in the rich soil of Nevis 
was a goldmine, there were wealthy merchants who 
dwelt here, and a rich and luxurious planting 
population to lead a grand train of luxury and ex- 
pense. Besides, Charlestown was the Saratoga of 
the West Indies, where all the wealth and fashion 
of the Windward islands gathered to spend the 
season at the famous sulphur baths. About ten 
minutes' walk from the town are the ruins of an 
immense stone hotel, which must have been able 
to accommodate several hundred guests. It now 
looks like the ruins of an ancient castle, so heavy 
are the crenellated walls of a massive gray, 

' By the caper overrooted, by the gourd overscored,' 

and three magnificent flights of stone steps lead 
up to the entrance hall. One can imagine what 
bevies of dark and languid Creole beauties in 
diaphanous muslins have passed up those steps, 
escorted by white-coated planters, or officers from 
the ships and garrisons in more brilliant uniforms, 



A REAL WEST INDIAN ISLAND 73 

or danced and flirted in the lofty ball-room, where 
now the clothes of the negro family which keeps the 
bath are hung to dry. Only the central portion 
of the building is roofed, the top story of the wing 
having entirely fallen in, and from the walled ter- 
race to which one climbs by a rickety stair there 
is a magnificent view of the town and the gleaming 
plain of the sea, while the soft and spicy breeze 
gently caresses the cheeks. It is a gentle ruin, 
embowered in luxuriant vegetation that has kindly 
wrapped and softened its decay, and is perhaps more 
suited to the scene than when it was alive with 
hilarious gayety. 

" The bath-house is at the foot of a gentle declivity 
in front of the hotel. It is an ancient and dilapi- 
dated building, whose battered doors move reluc- 
tantly on their hinges. To get to the bath you 
descend a long flight of brick steps leading to a pool 
of limpid green water with a gentle stir and flow. 
It is dark, the only light coming through cracks in 
the shutters, and it is not reassuring to hear the 
scuttle of a lizard or some other beast as you reach 
the platform. However, you take heart of grace 
and disrobe. At the first step the water seems 
unpleasantly warm, but soon a gentle languor and 
a sense of infinite deliciousness comes over you. 
You fairly wallow in delight as you sit with the 



74 CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

water rippling up to your chin, and you feel that 
you could rest for hours in absolute beatitude as 
the gentle warmth steals through your limbs. And 
when you emerge you feel as though you had 
never been clean before, so complete is the sense of 
the removal of all impurities. It is like the foun- 
tain of youth in its effects, and if Ponce de Leon 
had found it he would have been assured temporarily 
at least that the object of his long quest had been 
attained. Although a strong sulphur spring, there 
is not the slightest unpleasant smell, such as some- 
times accompanies a mineral bath, and the waters 
are of a limpid purity. Its effects are considered 
very good for rheumatic complaints and stories of 
wonderful cures are told of its waters. It does 
not seem impossible that in the future, when the 
attractions of the West Indies as a winter resort 
become better known, a new hotel may arise near 
the old one, and that an unusual crowd of visitors 
from the United States may replace with their 
exotic ways the departed glories of the extinct 
Creole aristocracy. There are certainly far less 
attractive places where fashion resorts in search 
of health or to dissipate the burden of its ennui. 
But in that case Charlestown would cease to be 
a typical West Indian town and become a mere 
tourist caravansary like Bermuda or St. Augustine, 



A REAL WEST INDIAN ISLAND 75 

and those who can now delight in its quaint and 
old-world flavor would not come to be dinned and 
dazed by American hotel life. 

"Nevis is not one of the historical West India 
Islands. It was not fought for and refought for as 
were the other islands, when France, Spain, and 
England struggled for the possession of the pearls 
of the Antilles, nor was it a place of enormous loots, 
as was the neighboring island of St. Eustatius when 
Rodney swooped upon it. Every one will tell you 
that it was the birthplace of Alexander Hamilton, 
as they will in Santa Cruz that the illustrious Peter 
Jackson first saw the light there. A more famous 
man than either has, however, left the trace of his 
visit there. In the old Fig Tree church a few miles 
from town, the register shows that Horatio Nelson, 
then a post captain in the British navy, was there 
married to Mrs. Fanny Nesbitt, the faithful woman 
whom he deserted for the brazen charms of Lady 
Hamilton, and of whom he wrote in one of the 
most singular expressions of feeling ever uttered 
by man ' that if the Lord should remove the obstacle 
to their union ' (meaning his own union with his 
mistress), as though heaven should interfere to sanc- 
tion his adultery by murder. Meditating upon the 
strangeness of humanity, we may leave Nevis to 
its sempiternal calm." 



X 

ANTIGUA AND ITS ANNALS 

MONTSERRAT AND ITS LIME JUICE FACTORY PRATING 

FOR RAIN A TALE OF ABDUCTION, JEALOUSY, AND 

DEATH INDIAN WARNER TURTLE SOUP HERE AND 

IN LONDON 

The nisrht air on the Caribbean Sea was mild and 
refreshing. When the passengers had retired, and 
all lights were out which the rules required, I used 
to come out from my stateroom, and spreading a 
steamer chair astern on the hurricane deck, recline 
and gaze for hours at the heavens, and at the dark 
masses of black mountain land along which we 
coasted. The West Indian night is beautiful, the 
sky a deep violet, the atmosphere clear, and while 
multitudes of stars are visible to the naked eye, the 
larger planets shine with a refulgence unknown in 
the temperate zone. 

In such a night we rounded Nevis and passed 
Redonda, which seemed little more than a black rock, 
and then sailed by the lofty crags of Montserrat. 
This is a port of call for trading vessels, which 

76 



ANTIGUA AND ITS ANNALS It 

receive large quantities of the lime juice manufact- 
ured here for export to the United States and else- 
where. The trees are planted closely in the orchards 
in order to prevent vegetation beneath from exhaust- 
ing the soil. They begin to bear after three years 
and continue to yield well for half a dozen or more 
years. The limes are gathered as they fall to the 
ground by children and squeezed between sugar 
rollers. The juice is then boiled till it is thick, and if 
intended for shipment is run into hogsheads of fifty 
gallons. The juice is used as an anti-scorbutic and 
largely for making citric acid. It is made at other 
islands, notably at Dominica ; but the best quality 
of juice known to commerce is made on Montserrat. 
The industry was originally established by Quakers, 
and it has been of far more use to mankind (and I 
am happy to say, of equal profit to the capitalists) 
than the making of rum which employs so many of 
the West India islanders. Many a scurvy-stricken 
sailor has had reason to bless the founders of this 
beneficent industry. Steaming slowly through the 
night, on account of reefs and shoals, we cast anchor 
off Antigua, in an open roadstead just before sunrise. 
When the sun rose, at once everything was bright 
and began to be hot. We looked upon the light- 
house on a reef near which we had sailed, and at the 
wreck of a steamer lying upon another reef about 



78 CRUISING AMONG THE CARTBBEES 

eight miles from shore, with the sea dashing over her 
decks. Masts and funnel were still standing, though 
the vessel had been ashore for two years and the 
insurance money had been paid. 

Antigua is long and low, without high mountains 
or striking features. There are a few hills at one 
end and an eminence of about fourteen hundred feet 
not far from the centre of the island. Seen from a 
distance the island seemed rough and barren, but as 
the voyager draws near, hills and valleys open to his 
view, and the shore puts on an appearance of luxu- 
riant vegetation, though destitute of trees except 
around the town of St. John's. This is the capital of 
the Windward Islands, and the governor resides here, 
in an unpretentious house with a public park near at 
hand and the beginning of a botanic garden beyond. 
The whole island is under cultivation and all in 
sugar, hence the present depression of that staple is 
severely felt. The want of springs and an insuffi- 
cient rainfall are the only serious drawbacks to the 
fertility of Antigua. A story is told of a man who 
during a period of drought brought casks of water 
from Montserrat and sold the precious liquid for so 
high a price that he was induced to make a second 
excursion for water. Arriving with his cargo, he 
increased his figure so much that the inhabitants 
refused to buy, and instead united in solemn prayers 



ANTIGUA AND ITS ANNALS 79 

for rain, which being speedily answered, at once re- 
warded their faith and punished his greed. The 
moral of the story is a good one whether it be fact 
or fiction. There are but two or three springs and 
no river, and the rainfall is less than on the other 
islands, yet on account of its dryness and sandy soil 
the health of the island is excellent. 

Antigua lies twenty-five miles northeast of Mont- 
serrat and forty miles north of Guadeloupe, in lati- 
tude seventeen degrees north and longitude sixty- 
two degrees west. It is eighteen miles long and 
seventeen miles broad, and contains about sixty thou- 
sand acres. When slavery was abolished in 1834, the 
population consisted of about two thousand white and 
colored people, and thirty-three thousand negroes. 
Since the emancipation of the slaves the white popu- 
lation has steadily declined and the negroes have as 
steadily increased. Antigua has been the scene of a 
number of insurrections in the days of slavery. The 
island was discovered by Columbus on his second voy- 
age, but as he found it full of Caribs, and could get no 
good water, he simply gave the island a name after 
the Church of St. Mary of Antigua at Seville, and 
sailed away. In 1520 Don Antonio Serrano, of 
Spain, tried to colonize it, but failed ; a century later 
a French captain of a privateer made a short stay ; 
and in 1632 Sir Thomas Warner, who is buried at 



80 CRUISING AMONG THE CAEIBBEES 

Old Road on St. Kitt's, and who was a notable man 
in West Indian history, sent his son with a British 
army to take and settle the island. There was con- 
tinual fighting for years with the Caribs, who had 
no mind to have their possessions taken from them 
by Englishmen, and in 1640 a Carib chief stole the 
English governor's wife and carried her away to 
Dominica. 

This raid is celebrated in the ancient legend of 
Ding a Ding Nook, which is briefly as follows : 
The wife and child of the governor of Antigua, 
who were very dear to him, were one day missing 
from the government house. Inquiry from all the 
neighboring planters revealed no traces of them. 
Gradually it dawned upon the agonized husband 
and father that his wife and child had been carried 
off by the Carib Indians. He heard that some 
Caribs with their chief had been seen upon the 
island and that they had returned to their homes in 
Dominica. With a few friends he sailed down the 
islands and landed where the town of Roseau now 
stands. There he learned that his suspicions were 
correct, and that the chief with his captives had left 
shortly before for his lodge in the centre of the 
island. He followed after, and before long found 
spots of blood on the path. Believing that these 
spots indicated that his family had been slain, the 



ANTIGUA AND ITS ANNALS 81 

pursuers hurried forward and came upon a party of 
Indians, whom they slew after a severe battle. A 
short distance beyond the place of conflict, the gov- 
ernor came to an Indian lodge, and upon opening 
the door his wife and child fell into his arms. The 
blood upon the path had dropped from the bruised 
feet of the captives as they walked up the rough 
mountain path. 

Full of gratitude and happiness, the governor 
brought his family back to their Antiguan home, 
but, alas, the anxiety and excitement through 
which he had passed disordered the mind of the 
husband. He began to be suspicious of his wife, 
and imagined that she had gone freely with the 
Carib chief. No devotion or affection on her part 
seemed able to break the dark spell which enchained 
him, and fierce jealousy and hate took the place of 
love. The efforts of friends to dissipate his fancies 
proved unavailing and it became necessary to sep- 
arate the unhappy man from one whom he had ten- 
derly loved and rescued from captivity, lest he 
should take her life. Whether the cloud ever lifted 
and happiness returned, the legend does not inform 
us. 

Antigua was again captured by the French in 
1656, but was restored by the treaty of Breda the 
next year. There was little peace for the colonists, 



82 CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

however, for the Caribs kept up their raids till a 
deliverer arose in the person of Philip Warner. 
He was the son of General Sir Thomas Warner, 
the English governor of St. Kitt's. An illegitimate 
son of Sir Thomas by a celebrated Carib woman, 
who lived far into this century, had become a great 
Carib chief, and ruled the Indians with despotic 
sway. Philip determined to put an end to the 
Carib raids, and taking a party of men, he went to 
the place where his brother lived. There was great 
joy, says the French historian, Dampier, at their 
meeting. Philip made a great feast, and invited 
his brother and the Indians to the merrymaking, 
but at a given signal, his men fell upon the guests 
and murdered Indian Warner and all his tribe. For 
the murder of his brother, Philip was tried, but 
triumphantly acquitted, had his lands restored, and 
was reinstated as governor of Antigua. In 1689 
Colonel Coddington, a man famous in West Indian 
annals, came from Barbados to govern the island. 
He was succeeded by Daniel Parke, from the colony 
of Virginia, in 1708. Parke was an American 
planter, but turned out a great rascal. In 1736 the 
negroes, who had now become numerous, led by 
Klaas, a powerful black, tried to blow up the gov- 
ernment house, but the plot was revealed by an 
Obeah witch. Succeeding years have been marked 



ANTIGUA AND ITS ANNALS 83 

by hurricanes and. pestilences, the year 1835 having 
been signalized by both of these calamities. There 
was a previous earthquake in 1833, which gave 
twenty-three distinct shocks which were felt through- 
out the islands. The town of St. John's has also 
been visited by many disastrous fires, the worst of 
which was in 1841, when the loss reached a million 
of pounds. In 1825 came the first Anglican bishop, 
Coleridge, who has written an interesting book 
upon the Caribbees. St. John's is now the resi- 
dence of a bishop, and the cathedral, with its two 
lofty yellow towers, and long nave full of the tombs 
of English residents, is a striking feature of the town 
as it is seen from the sea. 

The island, though destitute of imposing char- 
acteristics, is yet a beautiful member of the group. 
It is marked by the peculiarities of the tropics. 
Overhead is the clear blue of the sky. The crystal 
waters are sparkling in the beams of the blazing 
sun. Green hills descend to the very shore. Here 
and there a calm and silent glen opens to the 
sight. Numerous creeks run far inland, and appear 
amid the surrounding verdure like chains of silver. 
A few negro huts are seen nestling at intervals 
among clumps of trees. At Grace Bay the land 
looks sprinkled with gold from the flowers of the 
aloe which grows there in profusion. 



84 CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

In the midst of such natural beauties the higher 

classes of the inhabitants of these islands while 

away the hours of daylight until the sun reaches 

the west and throws his rich beams on every cloud 

which 

"Throngs to pavilion upon him." 

Suddenly he appears to touch the bosom of the 
flaming waves, and then, sending forth one vivid 
line of glory, he sinks to rest upon his golden 
couch. I wish that I could write with truth as 
well as poetry, 

"Now comes still evening on;" 

but no sooner does the sun go down, than sounds 
of all sorts fill the air. Negro men and women 
and children gather in groups and begin to gab- 
ble, crickets and frogs raise their shrill pipes, 
mosquitoes hum, and cockroaches scrape the floors 
or crawl in myriads over the tables, while in 
country places land crabs clatter about, owls hoot, 
and multitudes of insects make unmusical noises. 
We were fortunate in sleeping upon a steamer 
most of our nights, and, being anchored some dis- 
tance from shore, enjoyed a peace which the lands- 
man could not secure. 

In advance of our arrival we had sent word to 
have a turtle dinner prepared, and as this delicacy 



ANTIGUA AND ITS ANNALS 85 

is to be had in great quantity, visions of rich 
green fat, and white meat, and yellow eggs, filled 
the imaginations of the epicureans of the party. 
But such dreams were destined to a rude awaking. 
Our restaurateur was overwhelmed by the size of 
the order which he received, and no one who dined 
that day at Antigua desired to repeat the expe- 
rience, even for the fun of seeing a mob of negro 
men and women scramble after dinner in the 
street for bits of silver which were lavishly scat- 
tered among them like corn among a flock of 
chickens. The stately turtle soup of the lord- 
mayor of London, which I have eaten on several 
occasions, is more to my taste, even though it be 
suspected of relationship to a calf's head, than all 
the real turtle cooked in this far-off West Indian 
island. 

When we had eaten the banquet and seen the 
sights, we bade farewell to the town of St. John's, 
its streets of white wooden houses with green 
blinds, its grand cathedral and miniature harbor, 
and sailed due south towards a mighty mass of 
dark green land, over which clouds were continu- 
ally rolling and tossing, half revealing, half conceal- 
ing the peaks and ridges of what we soon learned 
to know as Guadeloupe, one of the largest and 
strangest of the islands of the archipelago. 



XI 

WITCHCRAFT AND SUPERSTITION 

IGNORANCE AND CREDULITY OF THE NEGROES — OBEAH, 

WHAT IT IS AND HOW PRACTISED SIMILAR BELIEFS 

IN OTHER NATIONS AN ANSI, JUMBEE AND DUPPY 

STORIES SPIRITUALISM AND HYPNOTISM 

No account of a tour in the Caribbees would be 
complete without reference to the superstitions of 
the negroes. One cannot talk with them, or visit 
their cabins, or observe their habits, without recog- 
nizing the fact that they are like children in their be- 
lief in ghosts and devils and evil influences. These 
have led them to frightful practices in the past, and 
I was credibly informed, that while there is apparent 
advance in knowledge and civilization, there are 
places in the islands where dense superstition and 
barbarous customs still prevail. Among these super- 
stitions none has been more potent than the 
"Obeah," concerning which I shall give some facts, 
derived chiefly from persons who from residence in 
the West Indies and familiar acquaintance with the 
negroes, have had abundant opportunities of observa- 

86 




A WEST INDIAN TYPE 



WITCHCRAFT AND SUPERSTITION 87 

tion. Among the writers who have treated the 
subject Pe're Labat has been most frequently referred 
to, but more than two centuries have passed since 
his interesting work was published. It is still an 
important aid to the tourist among the Caribbees, 
so far as general topography, natural history, and 
phenomena are concerned. But the state of society, 
and the manners and customs of the people, are much 
changed from what they were in his days. Carmi- 
chael's " Domestic Manners of the People of the West 
Indies "; " West Indian Folk-lore," by Mary P. Milne ; 
Hesketh J. Bell's book upon " Obeah," as well as the 
books of Mr. F. H. Ober, to whom I have more than 
once referred, contain chapters upon these subjects, 
and I have availed myself of all of them. 

The term " Obeah" is most probably derived from 
" Obi," a word used on the east coast of Africa to 
denote witchcraft, sorcery, and fetichism in general. 
The etymology of Obi has been traced to a very 
antique source, stretching far back into Egyptian 
mythology. A serpent in the Egyptian language 
was called "Ob" or "Aub." "Obion "is still the 
Egyptian name for a serpent. Moses, in the name 
of God, forbade the Israelites even to inquire of 
the demon " Ob," which is translated in our Bible, 
charmer or wizard, divinator or sorcerer. The witch 
of Endor is called " Oub " or " Ob," translated Python- 



88 CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

issa, and " (Dubois " was the name of the basilisk, or 
royal serpent, emblem of the sun and an ancient 
oracular deity of Egypt. 

Hesketh Bell, writing from St. Vincent, says that 
" the Obeah of the negro is nothing more nor less 
than a belief in witchcraft, and this operates upon 
them to such a degree as not unfrequently to pro- 
duce death. There are few Indian estates upon 
which there is not one or more Obeah men or women ; 
the negroes know who they are, but it is difficult for 
white people to find them out. The way they pro- 
ceed is this : A negro takes a dislike to a negro or 
negroes, either upon the same estate with himself 
or upon another ; he goes to the Obeah woman 
and tells her that he will give money or something 
else as payment if she will Obeah such and such 
persons. The Obeah woman then goes to those 
people, and tells them she has Obeahed them. Slow 
poison is at times secretly administered, but in by 
far the greater number of cases the mind only is 
affected ; the imagination becomes more and more 
alarmed, the spirits sink, lassitude and loss of appetite 
ensue, and death ends the drama. 

" The practice of Obeah is too common among the 
negroes, and very fatal to them. I know of an 
instance where fifteen people, in the course of a 
few months, died of no other cause. It is vain to 



WITCHCRAFT AND SUPERSTITION 89 

reason with them. 'Missis, I'm Obeahed, I know 
I'll go dead,' is all you can obtain from them. 
Negroes so firmly believe this that they have bottles 
hung round and about their houses, and in their 
grounds, full of some sort of infusion which they 
prepare to prevent the Obeah from affecting them; 
they often wear an armlet, or some such thing, for 
the same purpose. 

" The practice of Obeah is death by the laws of St. 
Vincent, but there is no possibility of conviction. 
Negroes believe that spirits occasionally appear, and 
that devils, or, as they call them, ' Jumbees,' are 
frequently to be seen ; nay, that Jumbee sometimes 
compels them to go away with him ; but I rather 
think they make a convenience of Jumbee upon such 
occasions. The name is different, but the truth is 
negroes believe in witchcraft ; and so do many of the 
lower orders in Britain. I have seen country ser- 
vants in the county of Mid Lothian who were as 
firm believers in it as any negro can be. I have seen 
a dairymaid churn with the dairy locked for fear of a 
man coming in whose eye she declared would spoil 
the butter. I have often reasoned with this woman, 
who was in other respects a shrewd, sensible female 
for her station in life, and she never ceased to tell 
me that if I disbelieved in witches I must disbelieve 
the Bible ; there was no arguing with her, for in her 



90 CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

opinion it was sacred ground. I have also often 
heard the lower classes in Scotland use the same 
argument. Not long ago a respectable man in one 
of the western counties of England sent to borrow a 
churn from a lady of my acquaintance, because, as he 
alleged, 'the devil had got into his churn and he 
could not make butter in it.' " 

Half a century since, the practice of Obeah caused 
so much loss of slave property by poisoning that 
it was found necessary to enact the most stringent 
laws for its repression, and an ordinance was passed 
in all the West Indian colonies, imposing heavy 
penalties on any person found guilty of dealing 
in Obeah. Unfortunately, through the knowledge 
possessed by some of the old negroes of numerous 
bushes and plants, unknown to medicine, but found 
in every tropical wood, it is to be feared that many 
deaths might still be traced to the agency of these 
Obeah men. The secret and insidious manner in 
which this crime is generally perpetrated makes 
detection exceedingly difficult. A Roman Catholic 
priest, who was asked to give his opinion upon the 
subject, replied : " Ah, my dear sir, I can't remember 
half I hear and notice on these ever-present super- 
stitions of the people, but I assure you that it is 
one of the greatest obstacles I meet with in my 
work among my parishioners ; these foolish but so 



WITCHCRAFT AND SUPERSTITION 91 

deeply rooted beliefs of theirs in the power of 
Obeah and witchcraft meet me at every turn, and 
after talking hours and trying to prove to them 
how ridiculous and senseless all these ideas are, I 
only obtain a seeming acquiescence and make no 
lasting impression. I have tried everything to com- 
bat the baneful influence, and endeavored to make 
them ashamed of their ignorance and credulity, 
but with precious little effect. I have even adopted 
the Japanese custom of punishing a whole street 
for the misdeeds of one criminal living in it, by 
refusing the sacraments for a time to a whole family, 
if a member of it be known to be dabbling in Obeah 
all to the same purpose." 

" West Indian Folk-lore " contains many similar 
instances of the influence of Obeah upon the 
negroes. It has also a collection of fairy tales and 
silly stories with which the people amused each 
other, from which I extract an example : " In the 
West Indies if you desire to be told a fairy tale or 
anything of the kind you must ask for ' Anansi ' 
stories. In the old days these were usually told 
at local gatherings of the people ; such as wed- 
dings or funerals, the latter being equal occasions 
for festivity with the former. The old women keep 
the children quiet with these tales, and the small, 
white ' buccra,' sitting by its nurse, will have a flood 



92 CRUISING AMONG THE CARlBBEES 

of folk-lore wasted on its entertainment, which an 
elder interested in the same will vainly endeavor 
to hear, the narrator repeating : ' Dat foolishness ; 
wonder missus car to har dat.' Anansi stories, 
which are those usually told to children, owe their 
name to a mysterious personage who plays the 
principal part in them — a hairy, old man with 
long nails, very ugly, called brother or Father 
Anansi. In some way Anansi bears a resemblance 
to the Scandinavian ' Troll ' or ' Scrattle,' and 
the 'Lubber fiend' of the English north country; 
and his character is not unlike that of the German 
'Reinecke Fuchs,' or the Japanese 'Kitsuri Fox,' 
thievish and cunning. Here is one of the Anansi 
stories : Anansi and Baboon were disputing one 
day which was fattest; Anansi said he was sure he 
was fat, but Baboon declared he was fatter. Then 
Anansi proposed they should prove it; so they 
made a fire and agreed that they should hang up be- 
fore it and see which would drop most fat. Baboon 
hung up Anansi first, but no fat dropped. Then 
Anansi hung up Baboon, and very soon the fat 
began to drop, which smelt so good that Anansi 
cut a slice of Baboon and said : ' O brother Baboon, 
you fat for true.' But Baboon didn't speak. So 
Anansi said: 'Well, speak or not speak, I'll eat 
you every bit to-day,' which he really did. But 



WITCHCRAFT AND SUPERSTITION 93 

when he had eaten np all Baboon, the bits joined 
together in his stomach, and began to pull him 
about so much that he was obliged to go to a doctor. 
The doctor told him not to eat anything for some 
days, then he was to get a ripe banana and hold 
it to his mouth. When Baboon, who would be 
hungry, smelt the banana, he 'would be sure to run 
up to eat it, and so he would run out of his mouth. 
So Anansi starved himself and got the banana, and 
did as the doctor told him, but when he put the 
banana to his mouth he was so hungry he couldn't 
help eating it. So he didn't get rid of Baboon, 
which went on pulling him, until he went back to 
the doctor, who took a banana and held it to Anansi's 
mouth, and very soon the baboon jumped up to 
catch it, and ran out of his mouth, and Anansi 
was glad to get rid of him. And baboons to this 
very day like bananas. Besides Anansi stories 
there are also Duppy or Jumbee stories which relate 
solely to ghosts, and resemble what the French 
call 'revenants,' the Germans 'wald gheist,' and 
are also similar to the Irish ' fetch.' " 

The want of grace and description about the folk- 
tales seems to be less striking wherever the French- 
man or Spaniard has had dominion ; in Martinique, 
for instance, there seems to be more romance and 
graceful sentiment about the negro and Creole super- 



94 CRUISING AMONG THE CAEIBBEES 

stitions than in the English islands, the ghost stories 
are more weird and powerful, and the expressions 
used are happier and more refined. Perhaps the 
grace and esprit of the old French settlers have 
left an impression upon their descendants. 

In Martinique prevails a curious superstition, 
that of the "diablesse," a beautiful negress with 
piercing eyes, who passes silently through some 
lonely cane-piece where men and women are at 
work, and whatever man she smiles upon must arise 
sooner or later and follow her — to death, since he 
is never seen again. This superstition is apparently 
akin to that prevailing among the Russian peasants, 
of the Baba Yagas, or witch woman, whose look 
wiles a man away to death. 

People who are out of doors very early in the 
morning in tropical latitudes, often feel in the midst 
of the cool freshness, sudden breaths of hot air — 
a curious phenomenon. This gives rise to another 
superstition, and the negroes say they are passing 
by " Jumbee's fireplace," where he made his fire over 
night. The beautiful silk cotton tree is supposed 
to be Jumbee's favorite haunt, and a negro is loth to 
cut down one of these trees, certain that some evil 
will overtake him after so doing. For this a lover 
of nature is inclined to bless Jumbee, as the means 
of saving many of those grand kings of the forest. 



WITCHCRAFT AND SUPERSTITION 95 

The advance of education will doubtless do much 
to dispel these silly and dangerous superstitions, 
but when we realize how many people are under 
the control of spiritualists, and Christian scientists, 
and faith cures, in the most enlightened and Chris- 
tian communities, it does not seem strange that races 
that have only been emancipated from bondage for 
a few generations, and from heathenism for perhaps 
a few centuries, should be thus blinded and deluded. 



XII 
GUADELOUPE 

UP SALT RIVER HURRICANE WORK A GREAT STEAM- 
ING VOLCANO COFFEE PLANTATIONS AND CULTURE 

BRILLIANT MARKET SCENE EXTRACTS FROM PERE 

LABAT 

It was evening when we saw the gleam of the 
lighthouse at Point a Pitre on Guadeloupe, and let 
go the anchor in the harbor. The electric lights 
still shone in the town and one or two boats came 
out to the steamer, but even the quartette of young 
men, who were usually ready for an excursion 
ashore at any hour of the day or evening, were 
content to wait till morning. Some of the party 
were polishing up their French in the cabin; for 
Guadeloupe and Martinique inhabitants speak only 
the French language, though their speech is not 
the dialect which Americans call "Parisian." The 
negroes throughout the islands speak a French patois 
which is hardly intelligible to other people, and is 
a meaningless jargon to foreigners. Morning re- 
vealed to us a beautiful landlocked bay with a 

96 



GUADELOUPE 97 

thoroughly tropical aspect. Mangroves lined the 
banks of the river, cocoanut and other palms over- 
hung the town and grew in groves beyond its limits, 
tall breadfruit trees with rounded tops and dark foli- 
age diversified the landscape, and a nearer view re- 
vealed orange orchards, and gardens full of hibiscus, 
begonias, and roses. Upon the right was an immense 
group of sugar factories, the Usines Centrales, where 
the sugar-canes are brought by the planters and sold 
to be manufactured into sugar. Huge smokestacks 
were vomiting out black smoke, and the industry 
was in full blast, as we landed at a stone pier from 
a little naphtha launch which plies in the harbor. 

The town of Point a Pitre lies on the south- 
western side of the island, at the southern mouth 
of a river called Salee, or Salt River. It has an 
excellent harbor protected on every side. The 
town is new, having been rebuilt not many years 
ago, after a fire which laid the old town in ashes. 
It had previously been shaken down by an earth- 
quake, and blown to pieces by a hurricane. The 
first town was built of stone, which the earthquake 
tumbled into ruins ; the second was built of wood 
to prevent damage from this source, but a hurri- 
cane blew the frail structures away; and fire 
burned up the next town. The present town is laid 
out upon broad, straight streets, with several public 



98 CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

squares, and many fine buildings. It is said to be 
built of iron-framed bouses filled in with brick, to 
guard against the varied attacks from the elements 
which have proved so destructive in the past. 

Guadeloupe, of which island Point a Pitre is one 
of the chief towns, is the largest of the West India 
Islands which belong to France, and has an impor- 
tant commerce. It lies in latitude fifteen degrees 
north, and longitude sixty-one degrees west, embraces 
with its outlying islands six hundred and twenty-five 
square miles, and has a population of more than one 
hundred and fifty thousand souls, three-quarters of 
whom are blacks. The main island is divided by 
Salt River, which is navigable for small boats, but is 
largely swamp. Guadeloupe proper lies on the west 
and Grande Terre on the east of the river, and each 
division is about thirty-five miles long; though 
Guadeloupe is a third wider than Grande Terre, 
being eighteen miles across from sea to sea, and 
contains the mountain range, whose summit is the 
steaming volcano, Soufriere. Grande Terre is low, 
flat, and marshy and is not composed of lava but of 
coral and marine shells ; Basse Terre is a vast mass 
of volcanic ddbris rising five thousand feet into the 
air, clothed with majestic primeval forests whose 
trees are of enormous proportions. We came to the 
southern end of the island upon our return trip and 



GUADELOUPE 99 

did not land, but we lay to for an hour to take the 
mail, and consequently could reconnoitre through 
the field-glass. This view revealed deep ravines 
whose sides were covered with dense forests out of 
which towered groves of vast magnitude, and now 
and then as the cloud-caps lifted, we caught sight of 
the awful blackness of the Soufri&re, the crater 
formed of a dozen peaks like giant teeth of the jaws 
of hell. Steam and sulphurous smoke poured forth 
from the abyss, and it was a relief when the pearly 
vapors once more shrouded the horrid place from 
mortal view. This is no imaginary picture of a vol- 
cano. In 1797 the Soufridre hurled forth dense 
masses of ashes and pumice and sulphur smoke ; in 
1843 its convulsions shook the island and tumbled 
its towns into ruins ; and before and since that date, 
smoke by day and flames by night have shown its 
fiery temper and un quenched power for evil, yet the 
French people increase, prosper, and are merry here. 
There are numerous coffee plantations on Guade- 
loupe, and also on Dominica. At the latter island I 
met a young Englishman, who had a small coffee 
plantation, which gave him a comfortable support 
and a visit home once in five years. The coffee 
plants are usually raised from seeds sown in beds, 
upon the mountains, where the thermometer varies 
from fifty-five degrees Fahrenheit in winter, to 



100 CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

eighty degrees in the heat of summer. When they 
are two years old, the small shoots are set out 
in rows six feet apart each way. In three years 
they begin to yield; they are increasingly fruit- 
ful for fifteen or twenty years, and live for a century. 
It was February when we were at Guadeloupe, and 
the trees were in bloom ; the fruit ripens from 
August to December, but blooms and green fruit and 
the ripened berry may be sometimes seen at once 
during the latter part of the year. The berry is red, 
of the size and color of a cherry, and coffee is made 
from the kernel or seed, which is divided into two 
hemispheres. This seed goes through a variety of 
processes before it becomes the coffee of commerce, 
and is prepared for use in the delicious beverage 
which is known all over the world. Most of the 
coffee of the French islands goes naturally to France, 
but it is not as cheap as the South American product, 
and its cultivation is encouraged by government 
bounties. The coffee and sugar interests do not con- 
flict, for the former occupies the highland and the 
latter the lowland. 

The orovernment of this French island is vested in 

O 

a governor and his council, and a general council of 
thirty members. Basse Terre is the capital, and the 
jurisdiction embraces the islands Guadeloupe, Marie 
Galante, De"sirade, Les Saintes, and St. Martin. 



GUADELOUPE 101 

Columbus discovered these islands in 1493 — naming 
the second one after one of his ships. France took 
possession of them in 1685, and after many changes 
of owners, in 1816 they became her permanent 
possession, and her policy has made them prosper- 
ous and productive, in spite of earthquakes and hur- 
ricanes. Slavery, which had been abolished in the 
English islands in 1834, continued in Guadeloupe 
till 1848. 

Landing at Point a Pitre from the naphtha launch 
at a pier near the fish market, our company dispersed 
through the town, some seeking the sugar mills, and 
others the market and museum. The market is held 
in a covered building in one of the principal squares, 
and presented a novel and exciting scene. Several 
hundred women — black, yellow, quadroon, and octo- 
roon, with very little negro blood and hardly any 
negro features — were chattering and chaffering, 
screaming and gesticulating like monkeys, over little 
piles of fruit and vegetables and roots and meats and 
bouquets of flowers. They wore loose and long flow- 
ing gowns of gaudy and brilliant prints, which they 
held half-way up to their waists as they walked in 
the market-place. On their heads were turbans 
which equalled anything in Damascus or Assouan, 
formed of Madras handkerchiefs, rolled and twisted 
about the head in many folds with one end sticking 



102 CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

up at the top. All the women wore jewels, neck- 
laces of huge beads, great hoops and cylinders of 
gold in their ears, bracelets and rings without num- 
ber. The passion of the Frenchwoman and of the 
blacks for the display of jewelry and gay clothing 
seems to have united in this race of islanders, 
and their appearance was gay and festive in the 
extreme. 

The women of Guadeloupe are good-looking, and 
we saw a few Creole girls who were beautiful. They 
had pure and fine complexions, brown and pale with 
a rose tint on the cheeks, and a thin skin through 
which the blue veins in the forehead could be traced. 
Their hair fell in glossy ringlets ; dark and lustrous 
eyes half hid by long drooping eyelashes, and pen- 
cilled brows, relieved the prevailing color of the face. 
Pearly teeth gleamed through thin coral lips, and 
when pleased or excited the whole face seemed to 
shine as water gleams in the sunlight. They were 
petite as compared with the large-limbed and broad- 
shouldered black women, with small and beautifully 
shaped hands and feet, and forms which might have 
posed for a Venus de Medici. Their voices were not 
soft and pleasant like those of the negroes, but treble 
and high-pitched, so that the illusion produced by 
their beauty was often dispelled as soon as they 
spoke, 




MILK SELLER--GUADELOUPE 



GUADELOUPE 103 

The population of Guadeloupe seemed to be in- 
dustrious, thrifty, and happy. The women came into 
town bearing on their heads baskets filled with bottles 
of milk, fruits and vegetables, coffee and vanilla beans. 
The shops were numerous and well supplied, and an 
air of activity and prosperity pervaded the place. 
There was none of the solicitation and begging 
among the street negroes of Guadeloupe which is so 
great a nuisance in most of these West Indian towns. 
" Father, I beg you a penny," said many a man and 
woman and boy to me from St. Kitt's to Barbados. 
I have not been begged more persistently in Italy 
and Spain than under the English flag in these 
islands. Travellers generally have themselves to 
blame for encouraging this kind of tax, but the 
negroes are such cheerful and natural mendicants 
that it is almost impossible to refuse them, especially 
when their rags and nakedness offer prima facie 
evidence of destitution, but these evidences were 
lacking at Point a Pitre. 

There is an interesting museum in the town which 
contains specimens of the animals, birds, and reptiles 
of the islands, and also many curiosities and remains 
of the Carib tribes who dwelt here when Columbus 
came. There were some living specimens of the 
mongoose. This rodent kills snakes, especially the 
dreaded fer-de-lance (whose bite is instant death) ; 



104 CBUISING AMONG THE CARIBBBES 

there were also some specimens in alcohol of this 
deadly snake. We never saw one alive in all our 
tours, though our ears were rilled with stories about 
them, and we had read the thrilling descriptions 
of Pere Labat till it seemed as if the Windward 
Islands without the fer-de-lance would be very tame 
places to travel in. A few extracts translated from 
Pere Labat's chapters on Guadeloupe will be read 
with interest in this connection. Writing of the 
sulphur waters, he says : — 

" There is a part of Anse, particularly near the 
river, where the beach is covered with rocks and 
pebbles of different sizes, but the rest is white, firm 
sand, which makes an agreeable walk. About three 
hundred paces to the left of the church I noticed 
that the waters of the sea in some places were bub- 
bling. I went out in a little canoe to see if it was 
really true, as they told me, that one could cook eggs 
and fish in the water. At a distance of about three 
fathoms from the shore, where the water was four 
feet deep, I found it so warm in these bubbling 
places that I could not hold my hand in it. I sent 
for eggs and boiled them by holding them sus- 
pended in the water by means of my handker- 
chief. On the beach I found the surface of the 
sand was no hotter opposite the places where the 
water boiled than anywhere else, but digging with 



GUADELOUPE 105 

my hand for five or six inches I began to feel 
heat, and at a depth of two feet I found the sand 
burning hot and smoking with a strong odor of 
sulphur. 

" They took me to a sort of pond or pool, where 
the water was whitish, as if it had been disturbed. 
Spouts of water were constantly seen, more fre- 
quently in the centre of the pool. I took some 
of this water in a shell and it was really boiling. 
When it cooled I tasted it, and found it good, but 
with a slight taste of sulphur. . . . It is a pity 
that these waters are not in the hands of people who 
could make use of them, for it is certain that they 
are excellent for many diseases. I was assured 
that many hydropathics had been completely cured 
after having sweated in this sand, and many others 
with chills and nervous affections found relief." 

Respecting one of the most famous birds of these 
islands, he writes : " We were at Guadeloupe at 
the season for hunting certain birds called ' devils.' 
They were to be found in Guadeloupe and Domi- 
nique, where they came at certain times of the year 
to lay their eggs and hatch them. This bird is 
about the size of a grown chicken, its plumage is 
black, and its wings are long and strong; its legs 
are short with feet like a duck's, but with long claws ; 
its beak is long and hooked and very hard ; it has 



106 CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

large eyes which serve it well in the night, but are 
so useless in the day that it cannot stand the light 
or distinguish objects, and if surprised by daylight 
far from its nest, the poor bird dashes itself against 
all obstacles in its path and finally falls to the 
earth. The manner of hunting devils is to force 
them out of their holes into the sunlight by means 
of dogs, when they are easily caught and their 
necks wrung." Again, speaking of the produc- 
tion of ginger, one of the most profitable exports, 
he says : " Ginger comes from the root of a plant 
about two feet high. This plant needs good but 
light earth to grow in, which is the reason it thrives 
in the soil of the Grande Terre of Guadeloupe, which 
is of this quality. They plant the ginger at the end 
of the rainy season, that is, in October and Novem- 
ber, and when it is ripe its leaves become yellow 
and dry. The plant is then taken up, separated 
from its roots, and dried by being exposed to the 
air or wind, but never to the sun, which would 
consume its delicate substance almost immediately. 
Thus prepared, ginger will last as long as one 
wishes to keep it, but of course it is better when 
fresh." 

Guadeloupe left pleasing impressions. It seemed 
less savage and rude and more interesting than any 
of the islands we had yet seen. After we had 



GUADELOUPE 107 

visited the cathedral, the various quarters of the 
town, the shops and the photographer's and the 
museum, we entered the launch and were soon on 
board and steaming on a fine afternoon towards 
Dominica. 



XIII 
SABBATH DAY ISLAND 

RAINBOWS AMONG THE GROO-GROO PALMS MONSIEUR 

COCKROACH AND HIS MAN ISAAC A RARE MOUNTAIN 

RIDE TROPICAL AIRS, SIGHTS AND SOUNDS A NEW 

PARADISE WITH SOME SNAKES HISTORY OF DO- 
MINICA 

As we moved along over a waveless sea towards 
the next landing-place, I remarked especially a 
phenomenon which had been noticed several times 
upon the voyage. The island of Guadeloupe, which 
is one of the largest islands, seemed very small, and 
appeared to hang as it were between sea and sky. 
Other travellers have alluded to this appearance 
which has some of the elements of the mirage, but so 
far as I have read, no one except Charles Kingsley 
has attempted an explanation. He ascribes this 
foreshortening to a combination of causes, among 
which the extreme clearness of the air, the simplic- 
ity of the form of the islands, and their isolation, 
which prevents comparison with other objects, are 
chief. Whether the explanation be correct or not, 

108 



SABBATH DAY ISLAND 109 

his observation accords with my own when he 
says that " one fancies at moments that the island 
does not rise out of the sea, but floats upon it, that it 
is held in its place not by the roots of the mountains, 
and deep miles of lava wall below, but by the cloud 
which has caught it by the top, and will not let it 
go. Let that cloud but rise and vanish, and the 
whole beautiful thing will be cast adrift; ready to 
fetch away before the wind, and (as it will seem 
often enough to do when viewed through a cabin- 
port) to slide silently past you while you are sliding 
past it." 

One of the pleasantest afternoons that I remember 
was the one on which our vessel skirted the leeward 
side of the bold and beautiful island of Dominica, 
whose steep shores were bordered with groo-groo 
palms, and whose lofty heights were clothed in 
every shade of green, or rather in hues ranging from 
pale yellow to a sapphire blue ; down whose far- 
reaching valleys waterfalls poured a white line of 
foam, and on whose lofty spurs and peaks a dozen 
rainbows were forming and fading, and reforming as 
the showers shifted with the changing gusts of air. 
What we saw in outline then was revealed in all its 
wealth of beauty the next day when we rode on 
horseback more than half-way across the island, 
ascending through the valleys and along the 



110 CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

mountain side to the height of more than three 
thousand feet. 

We cast anchor in front of the pretty town of 
Roseau, at the southern end of the island, at six 
o'clock, and five minutes later the sun went down 
with a bang from the gun in the fort, and in two 
minutes more it began to be dark. With the dark- 
ness came on board the steamer Monsieur " Cock- 
roach," who is the tourist agent of Dominica. He 
gathers the horses and guides and attendants for 
travellers who wish to go to the boiling spring or the 
lake of the clouds, or to climb to the high places of 
the Caribbean earth. He notifies " Isaac " and his 
Creole wife to provide ices, and liquid refreshment, 
and fruits and a variety of mementos for an ap- 
proaching company, and he intimates that original 
Caribs may be seen and heard at the half-way house. 
How he came by his name I do not know. It does 
not suggest the man, for he never crawls, and he 
is clothed in clean white linen, with an immaculate 
hat. With him we made arrangements for our ride 
of thirty miles next day, and had no occasion to 
regret our contract. 

The morning was clear and warm. For a wonder 
in Dominica no rain fell all day in the part of the 
island which we traversed. At nine o'clock we 
went ashore and found " Cockroach " waiting for us 



SABBATH DAY ISLAND 111 

with about forty horses of various sizes, shapes, and 
breeds, though the majority of them were tough 
little ponies evidently accustomed to hard usage and 
to mountain roads. Captain Fraser and a friend 
from Quebec were soon off with one company to 
visit the sulphur springs. Our good Pennsylvania 
priest and other friends were mounted by the Roman 
Catholic bishop of Roseau, and they took the course 
to a lime plantation, returning in the evening with 
glowing accounts of- shady bowers and cooling 
drinks, and the music of waterfalls and genuine 
West Indian hospitality. The colonel had a good 
mount and rode as became a graduate from West 
Point and a cavalry officer throughout our civil 
war. The Lawrence quartette were all on hand, but 
as there are no wheeled vehicles on the island, only 
one lady accompanied the party. 

The young men were in full force with their 
enthusiastic and never-wearied leader, and this 
island has rarely had a more intelligent and inter- 
ested band of visitors. The party followed the 
valley for a mile or two, wondering at the breadth 
of the river channel, which was more than fifty feet. 
A small stream of water ran through the centre, but 
we were assured that when the rainy season comes 
a full tide of rushing water fills the course from bank 
to bank. We soon struck into a woodland road, and 



112 CRUISING AMONG THE CAKLBBEES 

realized what it was to be in the midst of tropical 
vegetation. Great masses of foliage covered the 
most precipitous and jagged mountains. Looked 
at from a distance, it seemed as if the mountains 
were wrapped in vast robes of sheeny silk and 
velvet, gemmed with rubies, and emeralds, and 
topazes. Whole expanses of gray-green, shining 
leaves reflected the sun with dazzling effect. Be- 
yond rose a ridge crowned with palmistes, their tall, 
smooth stems standing up against the horizon, 
crowned with an umbrella-shaped top, which waved 
perceptibly in the wind, even at such an altitude. 
Near at hand, along the road, which later became 
only a path, trees and vines were dense and often 
interlaced. There were breadfruit, mango, lime, and 
lemon trees ; forests of cocoa trees loaded with fruit 
about the size of a large cucumber, colored accord- 
ing to the stage of development, green, yellow, or 
rich purple, and seeming to grow directly from the 
branch without any stem; clumps of green and 
graceful bamboos rising a hundred feet into the air 
and waving their feathery tops; huge ceiba trees 
covered with parasites and orchids ; almond trees 
and giant flamboyants with red blossoms. Further 
up, in vales and hollows, we came to manifold tree 
ferns, whose slender stalks supported at the height 
of twenty or thirty feet the most delicate green lace 



SABBATH DAY ISLAND 113 

work parasols and umbrellas that were ever seen. 
The ravines were full of those of larger growth, and 
the banks along our path were covered with little 
ones all infinitely beautiful. Here, too, were banana 
and tamarind trees loaded with clusters of fruit, 
while half hid from view by their enormous fronds, 
some curious red flowers, shaped like lobster's claws, 
clung to the green stems of a strange plant. I 
counted fifty kinds of flowers on a single bank, and 
the ferns and mosses were innumerable. 

As we rose higher, the air, which had been warm 
and languorous, became fresh and clear, and the 
ocean could now and then be seen on each side of the 
island. Anon we descended into deep valleys, where 
limes were cultivated on a plantation, and into 
denser valleys, where nothing met the eye but an 
ocean of foliage, heights crowned with trees and 
interlaced with shrubs, a Colorado canon resplendent 
with rich vegetation of the rarest and most beautiful 
sorts. However high we climbed, there were higher 
mountains, and the more we explored, the greater 
the wonders and the rarer the treasures were. 
Language utterly fails to describe the richness and 
beauty and variety of trees and shrubs and flowers 
and greens and colors in nature, which ravished our 
eyes. Odors, delicious and sensuous, filled the air, 
and the place seemed in all respects a woodland 



114 CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

paradise. The strange songs of birds which we did 
not know often startled us. Beautiful humming- 
birds of peacock-colored plumage, or black, with 
garnet spotted throats, or golden green, glistening 
like winged jewels in the sunshine, flew about, and 
not hovering on the wing as they do in our gardens, 
but lighting on twigs and plants, they gazed upon 
us with more curiosity than fear. 

Through such beauties we rode on and on for a 
dozen miles to a lovely fresh-water lake embosomed 
in the hills and girt about with tropical forests; 
after resting here and comparing our gathered treas- 
ures of plants and fruits and flowers, the party 
retraced its steps to the half-way house, where Isaac, 
in obedience to " Cockroach," had provided a good 
luncheon. After luncheon we were entertained 
with Creole songs and dances, which have evidently 
descended from the days when planters lived on 
these islands with their families of slaves. The 
melodies were sweet and quaint, unlike modern 
negro songs, and yet with little resemblance to the 
music of civilization. The dances were graceful 
and pleasing, and consisted largely of swaying 
motions of the body and gestures of the arms and 
head to rhythmic music. These pleasures ended, 
we rode down the mountain and through the little 
town, full of delightful memories of lovely scenes. 



SABBATH DAY ISLAND 115 

Roseau, the chief town upon the island of Domin- 
ica, is picturesquely situated on the sea at the 
mouth of a river which comes rushing and roar- 
ing down through hills which, though broken and 
ragged, are yet densely covered with a vast variety 
of foliage. It is a little place, with a few streets 
running at right angles, paved with large stones, 
and ending in three roads which lead into the 
mountains and up and down the coast. There is 
a row of solid houses near the landing. The other 
houses are small and mostly built of wood, one story 
high and twenty feet square. Some are even 
smaller. I went into a little enclosure containing a 
one-story house, a cocoanut tree and a breadfruit tree, 
and also a small garden patch. A man and two 
women were squatting around a kettle containing 
the dinner. The door of the house stood open, and 
its one room was only large enough for an ordinary- 
sized bed and a chair beside it. There were hooks 
on the rough board walls, and clothes and tin dishes 
hung indiscriminately upon them. This was the 
home of five people, three adults and two children. 
The climate is warm and they live mostly out of 
doors. But as there is much rain in Dominica these 
people must be wet a great part of the time. I 
passed a Sunday here, and attended the Wesleyan 
Methodist and English churches. The latter is a 



116 CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

large stone building with a clock, and some grand 
palmistes in front of it. The old French Catholic 
Cathedral is larger than both the other churches, 
as it well may be, for almost the entire population 
is of that faith. Opposite the English church is 
the governor's house and a well-stocked botanical 
garden. Each of the islands has a garden of this 
sort, well kept and a source of evident pleasure and 
pride to the inhabitants. Each town of any size 
has also a public library with a fair assortment of 
books, and a reading room. I remembered that New 
York has as yet no public library, and that the 
charter for a botanical garden has only just now 
been obtained. The frequent showers and hot sun- 
shine in Dominica cause a prolific growth of vegeta- 
tion. The gardens are full of trees and plants, 
flowering vines cover the walls, and there are many 
birds and butterflies flitting about in the sun- 
shine. 

I must add a few interesting facts about Dominica. 
The island is twenty-nine miles long by sixteen 
broad, and is the most southern of the islands 
belonging to what is called by the British the 
Leeward group. Its area is two hundred and 
ninety-one miles, its population twenty-seven thou- 
sand. The island is noted for the amount of its 
rainfall, which greatly adds to its fertility. The 



SABBATH DAY ISLAND 117 

thermometer stands at eighty degrees Fahrenheit 
in the shade during the months of June, July, and 
August; and at seventy degrees during the other 
months. The sun is vertical from May to August, 
and the inhabitants ascii (or shadowless) at noon. 
The longest day is thirteen hours, the shortest ten. 
September and October are the least healthy months 
of the year. Its exports are cattle, cocoa, lime juice, 
rum, molasses, and sugar. The chief town is Roseau. 
It was discovered by Columbus on Sunday, Nov. 
3, 1493, hence its name. It was colonized by the 
French, whom the Caribs allowed to settle. In 
1748, by the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, England and 
France stipulated that Dominica should be regarded 
as neutral, and left to the Caribs. Later, French- 
men settled on the island, but in 1756 it became 
by conquest a dependency of Great Britain. Culti- 
vable lands were sold, and yielded to the crown 
312,092 pounds sterling. The French settlers were 
generously treated, and allowed to remain secure in 
their possessions. 

In 1771 Dominica was constituted a separate gov- 
ernment. In 1776, attracted by its fertility, the 
French took advantage of the war between Great 
Britain and her North American colonies and at- 
tacked Dominica from Martinique. The French 
inhabitants of the islands invited them to do this, 



118 CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

and aided by making the English soldiers at the fort 
drunk and then filling the cannon with sand. The 
English troops and colonists made desperate re- 
sistance, but surrendered in 1778 and were badly- 
treated. In 1783 the island was restored to the 
British. A final attack was made by the French 
in 1805 under General La Grange, who landed on 
Roseau, but the French only held the place for five 
days, levying contributions and destroying the ship- 
ping; then they re-embarked. This was the last 
invasion, and the inhabitants still date from La 
Grange or 1805. 



XIV 

CARIBS OF DOMINICA AND ST. VINCENT 

COLUMBUS AND THE CARIBS — A FORGOTTEN LANGUAGE 

THE REMNANT OF A PEOPLE JENNY THE MONKEY 

AND HER REFLECTIONS 

This is perhaps as good a place as any to tell the 
story of the Carib Indians who once dominated these 
islands. We saw a few of their descendants, and it 
is claimed that upon their reservation at Dominica, 
and at St. Vincent, there are still some families of 
pure Carib blood. When Mr. Ober visited them in 
1876 he found about twenty families. His last visit, 
in 1892, was made for the purpose of ascertaining how 
many of these Caribs could be prevailed upon to go 
to the Chicago Columbian Exposition; it being the 
intention of the managers to include all the represen- 
tatives of America in their ethnological department. 
At that time there were about two hundred Caribs 
in Dominica, and of this number less than fifteen 
families were uncontaminated with negro blood. 
They were living in very much the same style as their 
ancestors did when Columbus found them in 1493. 

119 



120 CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

Columbus saw the Caribs first, not on this island, 
but at Carbet, near the point of Capesterre, on the 
eastern coast of Guadeloupe. They were dwelling 
in huts covered with palm branches ; they made 
cassava bread from the manihot plant, and caught 
fish along the shores, using the boats for the purpose 
which they had dug out of gum tree logs ; and they 
wove baskets like those which are now offered to the 
traveller. 

But when Columbus found them, they were not 
the peaceful and indolent people who now bear their 
name. Irving describes them as trained to war from 
their infancy, able to use the bow and arrow with 
unerring accuracy, and having sufficient knowledge 
of the heavenly bodies to enable them to calculate 
times and seasons. They let their coarse black hair 
grow long, painted their faces and bodies, and both 
men and women fought the Spaniards desperately. 
Proofs were found in their huts that they were can- 
nibals. They were treated as such by the Spaniards, 
but they struck back, and many a proud hidalgo bit 
the dust before they were subdued. Columbus called 
them Caribs or cannibals, both of which names are 
designations of valor or strength. The Caribs of 
South America claim a similar meaning for their 
name, and the author of " Myths of the New World," 
thinks that Shakespeare drew the plot of " The 



CARIBS OF DOMINICA AND ST. VINCENT 121 

Tempest" from South American mythology; that 
" Caliban," the savage native of the island in the play, 
is undoubtedly the word " Carib," often spelled among 
South American Indians " Caribana" and " Calibani." 
Another curious fact, is that Robinson Crusoe's 
"Man Friday" was a Carib, and his "island" was 
Tobago in the Caribbean Sea, which we saw but did 
not visit. But they had changed little in a hundred 
years, as may be seen from the account given by a 
writer of the last century : " The Caribs are of clear 
copper color, and have sleek, black hair ; their persons 
are well made, but they disfigure their faces by flatten- 
ing their foreheads in infancy. They live chiefly by 
fishing in the rivers and the sea, or by fowling in the 
woods, and in both pursuits they use their arrows 
with wonderful dexterity. It is said they will kill 
the smallest bird with an arrow at a great distance, 
or transfix a fish at a considerable depth in the sea. 
They display also great ingenuity in making curiously 
wrought panniers or baskets of silk grass or the 
leaves and bark of trees." They have preserved this 
art of basket making to the present day. I bought 
at Roseau a beautiful and useful basket, about the 
size of a small trunk. It is chiefly valuable on 
account of its lightness and also because it is water- 
proof. It is made from a plant called mahoe, in two 
thicknesses, with layers of wild plantain between. 



122 CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

This basket was not cheap, for the materials of which 
it is made are scarce, and the makers have a monopoly 
of the market, but it is a most serviceable article at 
home or in travel. I saw sets or "nests" of these 
baskets, as well as of another smaller and more delicate 
sort of Indian basket which is common in the islands. 

The Carib reservation in Dominica extends from 
Mahoe River to Crayfish River, about three miles 
along the Atlantic coast, and as far as they choose 
to cultivate inland. They raise the yam, sweet 
potato, cassava, banana, plantain, and tannier. 
Their little settlement, a mere hamlet, is called 
Salibia. Here they live, no longer warlike or enter- 
prising, satisfied with the careless and monotonous 
existence of uncivilized man. Of the whole number 
of two hundred, perhaps ten could make a canoe 
and twenty weave a perfect basket. The majority 
display no mechanical ingenuity. They raise the 
vegetables and gather the fruits which grow almost 
without planting and mature without care. 

Their ancient language is no longer used to any 
extent, and a patois made up of French and English 
in unequal proportions, is their common, and to a 
stranger unintelligible tongue. Though called 
Indians, they have little in common with the tribes 
which we designate by that general name. Their 
faces are oval, with broad and handsome foreheads, 



CAEIBS OF DOMINICA AND ST. VINCENT 123 

rather high, cheek bones, the eyes far apart, the nose 
regular and well proportioned, the mouth of moder- 
ate size with rather thin lips ; their skin is yellow or 
golden brown, and they have long, abundant, and fine 
hair, purple-black in color, like the hair of many 
Spanish women, though not of so fine a quality as 
theirs. They have graceful forms in youth, and 
very well shaped arms and legs, with small hands 
and feet. Like all the people of these islands, they 
stand erect, hold their heads with natural grace, and 
walk with an air of dignity and honor. But they 
grow old soon and are then even more hideous than 
the negroes about them. They are nominally Roman 
Catholics and the priest of Roseau visits them and 
administers the sacraments. Their ancestors believed 
in some sort of a future state, and in a supreme being 
to whom they offered sacrifice. The brave among 
them were supposed to go after death to a state of 
felicity; the cowardly were banished to dreary deserts 
and rugged mountains. 

Mr. Ober lived for two weeks with the Caribs 
of St. Vincent, in a little wattled hut thatched 
with leaves, for the purpose of securing a vocabu- 
lary of their ancient language. He found but six 
families of pure Carib blood and but a few persons 
who could speak the Carib tongue, and most of 
these were women. He says that "they have 



124 CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

few terms of abuse, and about the most offensive 
is, ' you are no good,' or ' you are no livelier than 
a turtle.' They have no word for virtue, which 
even at the present day is rare indeed. In count- 
ing they cannot express themselves above twenty 
and then only by means of the fingers and. toes. 
My wife is ' my heart ' ; a boy is ' a little man ' ; 
the fingers are the ' babes of the hands ' ; the rain- 
bow is ' God's plume.' There is a people among 
them called ' Black Caribs,' formed by the union 
of the American and the Ethiopian. These com- 
prise a small community on the northwestern shore 
of St. Vincent, at a place called Morne Ronde." 
Throughout the island he found traces of the ancient 
inhabitants, weapons, domestic utensils, axes, spear- 
heads, chisels, and fragments of pottery. Some of 
the rocks are covered with rude hieroglyphics, but 
there is no reason to believe that the Caribs ever 
came to or from the continent of North America. 
If they came originally from the southern conti- 
nent, as is likely, they had no relation to the 
Aztecs, but were a ruder and more warlike people. 
Some of the South American Caribs were pas- 
sengers with us on the homeward voyage under the 
care of an agent of Barnum's show. He was bring- 
ing them to New York to join the ethnological 
department of the great show, which was about 



CARIBS OF DOMINICA AND ST. VINCENT 125 

to make its annual progress through the United 
States. They were good-looking, yellow, long- 
haired, red painted men and women, stout-bodied and 
with extremely broad shoulders and strong limbs. 
The children were fat, with white teeth and mis- 
chievous black eyes, but they were not half so 
amusing as " Jenny," the monkey which one of 
our party bought at St. Kitt's. She was a veritable 
actress and was often brought out for our amusement. 
A more pathetic and ludicrous scene was never 
enacted, than that which took place when she first 
saw her own reflection in a mirror. No Carib 
Indian child or adult could give so interesting a 
performance. But alas, these Caribs are immortals, 
though their day on earth is nearly done. 

It was sad to meditate upon the speedy extinction 
of such a race. Once they were brave, powerful, 
and in happy possession of some of the fairest 
regions of the earth. Now, the few remnants are 
spiritless and degraded, without even a knowledge 
of their ancestors, unable to speak their language, 
content with a mere existence, and gradually yield- 
ing to the pressure of a civilization which is sweep- 
ing them into oblivion. 



XV 
ISLE DE MARTINIQUE 

FRANCE IN THE TROPICS — FOUNTAINS AND FLOWING 

WATERS MARDI GRAS AND WILD REVELRIES THE 

" SWIZZLE " AND ITS USES SNAKE STORIES EMPRESS 

JOSEPHINE, HER EARLY LIFE HERE AND HER STATUE 
MADAME DE MAINTENON 

We had been looking forward to Martinique as 
the queen of the Caribbees, and in some respects 
were not disappointed. The island is one of the 
most beautiful in its outlines, admirably cultivated, 
peopled with lively and enterprising inhabitants, and 
full of sights and sounds which attract and entertain 
the traveller. Its lofty Montague Pele*e is hooded 
with clouds a great part of the time, but now and 
then the summit is revealed, a mass of green, sky- 
piercing and grand, supported by vast flanks that 
sweep in graceful undulations to the sea. There are 
luxuriant plantations, dense and dark forests, vil- 
lages upon the high slopes, and two picturesque 
towns, St. Pierre and Fort de France, along the 
shores. The anchor of the Madlana dropped into the 

126 



ISLE DE MARTINIQUE 127 

azure sea, and straightway a little fleet of coffin- 
shaped boxes, propelled by naked boys each with two 
little paddles, came hurrying out to meet us. They 
had come as at St. Thomas to dive for coins, and 
soon they were plunging into the harbor after little 
silver pieces which the passengers lavishly threw 
overboard. The boys were quick to see the coins as 
they touched the water, and tumbled out of their 
queer tubs in a wild scramble for them. Long before 
the coin was out of sight, they had swam beneath it, 
and with the speed of fishes reappeared, holding the 
treasure high uplifted in their hands. This scene 
was repeated daily and at all hours, and the lithe 
brown bodies of these coin fishers became familiar 
objects about the vessel while we lay in the harbor 
of St. Pierre. 

The town is unique, a strange mingling of France 
and the tropics. It lies along the curve of a pretty 
bay and rises in , terraces upon the mountain side. 
The prevailing color of the stone houses is a golden 
yellow, which is set off by red tiled roofs here 
and there. A hurricane desolated the place a few 
years since, and when the houses were rebuilt many 
of them were roofed with corrugated iron, which 
has none of the picturesque effects of the old red 
tiles. The houses of the town are mostly built 
along narrow streets, and have unglazed windows, 



128 CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

which at night are covered with heavy wooden 
shutters, in which there are movable slats. The 
streets are steep and well paved, and through the 
wide gutters a constant stream of water pours down, 
carrying all the sewage to the sea. This rushing 
mountain water is the feature of the town ; it rises in 
numerous pretty fountains and is the public scaven- 
ger of the island. Men with huge poles and hooks 
keep the gutters from becoming clogged and clear 
the cesspools at the foot of the streets, which other- 
wise would become stuffed with cocoanut shells and 
palm leaves and plantain skins, and all sorts of rub- 
bish which are constantly thrown into these street 
channels. On the quay are thousands of hogsheads 
of molasses, and casks of rum and bags of sugar, 
waiting shipment; powerful blacks swarm among 
them, rolling and carrying them from place to place. 
There was not much work performed after our first 
day in Martinique, for it was the festival of Mardi 
Gras and the people gave themselves up to a strange 
mingling of devotion and dissipation. The costumes 
of the women are fantastic and bewildering at any 
time, but as the festival advanced, they became as 
grotesque and brilliant as any scene that was ever 
set upon the stage. The various faces of black, and 
red, and brown, and yellow, and of delicate cream 
and rouge, were a study for a painter or an ethnol- 



> 




ISLE DE MARTINIQUE 129 

ogist, and the straight bodies and easy swinging gait 
of the unshod feet of most of the inhabitants pro- 
duced a novel impression upon the beholder. On 
Sunday morning high mass was celebrated in the 
Cathedral and afterwards the whole town seemed 
to be given up to revelry and dissipation. Bands 
of masked men and women paraded the streets 
dressed in the most vulgar style. As night came 
on the tumult increased, the great theatre was 
crowded to suffocation, and yelling, laughing, danc- 
ing, and deviltry of all sorts made night hideous. 
We were glad of the refuge which the steamer 
afforded from such a pandemonium, but even at 
our anchorage we could hear the blare of the trum- 
pets and the shouts of the excited crowds upon 
the shore. I had seen the festival in New Orleans 
and elsewhere, where great license was allowed, 
but here it became, before it was ended, a wild 
and disgusting orgy. 

The island contrasts favorably with those which 
belong to Great Britain. There is none of that 
abject poverty and incessant beggary on the French 
islands which meet one at every turn in the Eng- 
lish possessions. The people have an air of thrift 
and self-respect which finds expression in the clean- 
liness, dress, and taste displayed in their streets, 
houses, and costumes. Some of the women are 



130 CKtJISlKG AMOtfG THE CARIBBEES 

very pretty and they wear their gay dresses in a 
style which leaves one arm and shoulder bare, and 
with their long skirts looped up at the hips. A 
large proportion of the population are of mixed 
blood, and have the fondness for ornaments and 
display which is common to all half-breeds. At 
the Cathedral, a large and handsome building with 
a sweet chime of bells, I saw a congregation which 
filled the place, and was composed, like most 
Roman Catholic assemblies, chiefly of women. 
Nearly all of these wore yellow and green turbans, 
made of Madras handkerchiefs with one end stick- 
ing out above the regular rolls of the silk or linen, 
like the plume of a soldier's cap. Some of the 
women had many bracelets and bangles on their 
arms, chains of huge gold beads around their necks, 
and curious earrings of three or four cylinders of 
gold fastened to the ears by enormous hoops. 
These heavy pendants dragged down the lobes of 
the ears till it seemed as if the flesh would be torn 
through by their excessive weight. 

Passing through the avenue Victor Hugo, which 
is the main street of the city, one morning, I over- 
took a crowd of boys who were following a rough 
and unkempt specimen of humanity, who carried a 
large iguana, which he had caught in the woods. 
He had tied the clumsy legs of the reptile across 



ISLE DE MARTINIQUE 131 

its back, and was carrying his captive by the tail. 
This immense lizard was as ugly a creature as I 
ever saw, about three feet long, with a black coarse 
skin divided into large diamond-shaped sections, a 
triangular head with lustreless eyes, and a cavern- 
ous mouth. His legs were long and thick, and 
ended in finger-shaped claws. The animal is not 
uncommon, is not at all dangerous to attack, and 
its flesh is said to be white and very much like 
chicken. This one was sold by its captor at the 
first butcher's shop, and for all I know we may 
have eaten it, in some of the highly seasoned ra- 
gouts of which we partook while on the island. It 
was at Martinique that some of the party made 
their acquaintance with the "swizzle," and in mem- 
ory thereof brought home the swizzle-stick, a deli- 
cate twig with three or four small branches stripped 
of its bark, and prepared for the same use as the 
toddy-stick of former times. Of all beguiling drinks 
the " swizzle " is said to be the most delusive. It 
is apparently compounded of ice water and lime 
juice and lemonade, with a little pure rum, and a 
liberal allowance of sweet sirup. It tastes like 
sweet sherbet, and reminds one of the bazaars of 
Cairo and Damascus, but let not the unwary trav- 
eller quench his thirst as freely with this seemingly 
innocent beverage as he would among the temper- 



132 CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

ate Mohammedans. The intoxicating quality of 
the alcohol is immensely increased by the fermen- 
tation of the sweetening, and those who ventured 
to test the chemical qualities of the " swizzle " by 
the personal analysis of more than one glass, were 
sorrowful and apologetic thereafter. Total absti- 
nence is always a good rule where strong liquor is 
an ingredient in any drink, and especially useful 
in dealing with unknown mixtures. 

This island was for a long time the residence of 
Pere Labat, to whose chronicles I have already 
referred. He was a keen observer of all natural 
phenomena, as well as an expert judge of men. He 
tells how at the beginning of the rainy season the 
crabs, the turtles, the lizards, and the serpents leave 
the woods and go to the sea. After the latter have 
bathed there, they pass between underbrush which 
has thorns, to which they attach themselves by the 
collar, and leave their whole skin. They then hide 
in some hole or in the root of a tree until their 
new skin is sufficiently hardened to expose to the 
air. During these times, when they are obliged 
to remain in seclusion, they become very thin and 
feeble, but no one pities them under these or any 
circumstances. The time when the serpents are 
most dangerous is during the heat. Then one 
may hear them hiss to each other, and it is not a 



ISLE DE MARTINIQUE 133 

good plan to go hunting. The negroes scent these 
serpents as a dog would a hare. 

" One morning," writes Labat, " I was in the 
woods with our men, one of whom was walking 
before me. Suddenly he stopped and said : ' My 
father, look at your feet, there is a serpent near here 
somewhere.' I asked him where, and he said : 'I do 
not see it, but I smell it,' and truly, I was sensible of 
a faint odor. A few moments later we discovered 
the serpent and killed it as is the custom. It was 
six feet long, and thick as a man's leg. I gave the 
body to some of our negroes, who easily disposed of 
it. I would have eaten some with them, for the 
meat is very nourishing, when not eaten too often, 
but for the fear of alarming the others of the party. 

At another time I had the pleasure of seeing a 
snake swallow a pillory. This is a sort of rat, native 
to these islands, nearly white and much larger than 
the ordinary sized rat of Europe. As soon as the 
serpent had bitten the pillory, it climbed quickly into 
the branches of a tree at the foot of which the pillory 
struggled for about fifteen minutes and then died. 
The serpent then came down and rolled himself on 
the pillory, until he had arranged it with its front 
feet by its sides, and its back feet alongside of its 
tail, and after it was well laid out he took it by its 
head and sucked it little by little into his stomach, 



134 CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

although it was quite difficult, for he was little and 
the pillory very big ! It was his last meal, for after 
I had seen what I wanted to see I killed him."" 

There are many things to detain and interest the 
tourist at Martinique. The scenes and society of the 
island are different in many respects from those 
with which he becomes familiar in British colonies. 
The people do not regard themselves as temporary 
exiles hoping erelong to return to the mother 
country, as British colonial people generally do.. 
The French have made the island their home and 
are proud of its loveliness and prosperity. Mar- 
tinique is inseparably associated with Napoleon as 
the birthplace of Josephine, and it has a large place 
in the history of the seventeenth-century conflicts 
between England and France. 

We made sundry excursions to the interior of the 
island. One morning we drove for several hours up 
the heights to the village of Morne Rouge, two thou- 
sand feet above the sea, over a fine smooth road 
along which were shrines, and little chapels, and 
crucifixes, and statues, with lamps burning before 
them and numerous votive offerings. The road led 
us by the botanical garden, a choice and beautiful 
retreat from the noise of the town and the noonday 
heat of the sun. The river beside which the road is 
built for a portion of the way, was at this season a 



ISLE DB MARTINIQUE 135 

small stream, and its channel was filled with half- 
naked washerwomen who covered the rocks with 
garments after having reduced them to a pitiable 
condition by pounding them with stones. At the 
lower end of the town near to the outlet of the river 
is the market-place, a large open structure occupying 
a handsome square. It was full of people, a great 
proportion of whom were women in the gayest of 
costumes, and as noisy as parrots. The markets of 
any town are interesting, and give an idea of one 
phase of the life of a people ; for what a nation eats 
and drinks has much influence upon what the nation 
does. Judging the natives of the Antilles by this 
rule, we may account for their unwarlike, good- 
natured, and passive character. Very little flesh is 
seen in the markets compared with the amount of 
fish and fruit. Nowhere else have I seen such fishes 
as swim among these islands. A painter would revel 
in their colors, scarlet and pink and green and gold 
and lilac and bronze and glistening silver. Their 
shapes are equally wonderful ; long and sharp like a 
sword-blade, flat and oval like a griddle, circular as 
a ball and covered with sharp thorns, or round like a 
cane and mottled as a snake. Next come the vege- 
tables and fruits — I have described them as I saw 
them at other islands, but Martinique seemed to 
have gathered from all the islands and added special- 



136 CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

ties of her own. The sellers were chiefly women, 
who squatted on their heels among their wares, 
while the restless many-colored crowd wound about 
among them, making a kaleidoscope at which one 
was never weary of looking. It was a change from 
this scene of clatter and confusion to the quiet of the 
botanical garden. This is about a mile from the 
town, and its natural features are sufficient to make 
it attractive. It lies along and within a ravine, 
whose lofty trees and tumbling water and deep quiet 
pools, and masses of vines and creepers, and confused 
assemblies of ferns and orchids and miniature palms, 
combine to give dense shade and coolness, and a 
sense of repose, which are most grateful after the 
glare and heat and noise of the market-place and the 
city streets. There are thickets of bamboo, and 
beautiful tamarinds, and wide-spreading ceiba trees, 
palms and palmistes in endless variety, great lianas 
and swinging vines, and parasites coiling around, and 
hanging from, and sitting upon the tree branches. 
The garden has a certain amount of care, and is 
better than any which I saw in the islands except 
those of the government houses of St. Vincent and 
Port of Spain, but with such a wealth of resources 
and a tropical climate, it is easy to imagine what 
wonders and beauties might be developed. 

Leaving the garden, wc climbed Morne Rouge over 



ISLE DE MARTINIQUE 137 

well-made roads, with solid stone bridges and care- 
fully prepared water channels in case of floods. The 
views were of indescribable loveliness, combining the 
grandeur of the mountains, the rich and varied 
greenery of the hills and cultivated slopes, and the 
deep blue of the distant sea. Now and then a cloud 
of mist swept for a few moments like a veil over the 
face of beauty, only to reveal after its passage a 
scene fresher and fairer than before. High above 
the neat and pretty villas, which form the village of 
Morne Rouge, is a steep slope which has been 
arranged for pilgrimage purposes. On the mountain 
side a succession of little chapels has been built — 
each of which contains some representation of the 
Passion of Our Lord. It is a Roman Catholic 
" Calvaire," and pious Romanists climb the mountain, 
sometimes on their knees, saying a prayer at each 
shrine. It is easier to get up with such intervals 
than to try to walk profanely to the top without 
resting. Even superstition has its compensations, 
and it may be added that the view on a fine day is 
enough recompense for the climb. The French 
islanders are better Christians after their kind, than 
the other inhabitants, but the amount of ignorant 
devotion to shrines and images is large. Besides 
the numerous little idols scattered along the roads, 
there is an immense "Christ" overlooking the bay, 



138 CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

and on Morne d' Orange, south of the city, stands a 
huge white " Virgin of Sailors." 

But there is one statue on Martinique which every 
traveller desires to see ; the statue of Josephine 
in the Savane at Fort de France. A little steamer 
runs daily from St. Pierre to Fort de France. 
The town stands on a level plain and consists of 
wooden houses built along wide streets crossing 
at right angles. The park lies near the shore, and 
contains long rows of mango and tamarind trees, 
which bend over broad promenades. Enclosed in 
this double row of trees is the Savane, and there, 
encircled by majestic palms, fronting the sea, but 
with the face turned towards the valley where 
she was born, stands this beautiful memorial to one 
of the loveliest, and noblest, and most unfortunate 
women who ever lived. The family history has 
recently been given by M. Frederic Masson in the 
Revue de Paris, from which the following facts 
are translated. Mr. Ober published essentially the 
same statement, in his book upon the Caribbees. 

In 1726 there came to Martinique a noble of 
Blaisois, named Gaspard-Joseph Tascher de la 
Pagerie. He belonged to an ancient and formerly 
very powerful family, but when Gaspard-Joseph 
landed in the West Indies the fortunes of his race 
had very much declined. He took good care, how- 



ISLE DE MARTINIQUE 139 

ever, to have his claim to noble descent fully 
established. His sons obtained places at Court, 
but the eldest preferred to live at Martinique and 
obtained a subaltern position in the Royal Marines 
stationed at Martinique. In 1755, when a new 
war had broken out between France and England, 
the king sent to Martinique, as governor of the 
West Indian Islands, one Francois de Beauharnais, 
a gentleman who had held high positions in France. 
Exactly how it came about no one seems to know, 
but the Taschers, poverty-stricken and without influ- 
ence, managed to raise the fortunes of the family 
through their women, who established themselves 
in the good graces of the new governor. 

M. de Tascher's three daughters married well, and 
his son also made a good match through M. de Beau- 
harnais, for Mile. Rose-Claire Des Vergers de Sanois 
belonged to one of the richest and most influential 
colonial families. Young Gaspard-Joseph proved 
himself worthy of the good graces of the governor ; 
he distinguished himself with conspicuous bravery 
when the English made a descent upon the island 
in 1763. On the 23d of June in that year his wife 
was delivered of a girl, which, five weeks later, was 
christened Marie- Joseph-Rose. This was Josephine. 
Between 1761 and 1791 six different priests held 
the parish of Trois-Flets, and this assisted in giv- 



140 CRUISING AMONG THE CARtBBEES 

ing credence to the later rumors that Josephine's 
birth could not be proved by the parish registers. 
But there is no possible doubt either of her iden- 
tity or of the exact date of her birth. In 1766 a 
terrible storm destroyed the plantation at Trois- 
Flets ; it took M. de Tascher thirty years to obtain 
the means for rebuilding his house, and thus 
Josephine passed her childhood in and around the 
sugar-house, the only building which withstood the 
storm, and in which the family had established 
themselves. At the age of ten she was sent to 
the Convent of the Dames-cle-la-Providence, at Fort 
Royal, where she remained until she was fifteen. 
She was an accomplished coquette even then; Cap- 
tain Tercier, then stationed with his regiment at 
Martinique, flatters himself that she was not quite 
indifferent in his presence, and a young English- 
man who rose afterward to high honors loved her 
so much that he never married because she refused 
him. 

Madame Revandin, Josephine's aunt, had gone to 
France with M. de Beauharnais, over whom she 
exercised undue influence. Madame Revandin made 
up her mind that the Taschers de la Pagerie should 
profit by her good fortune. Why not marry young 
Alexander, the son of the Marquis de Beauharnais, 
to one of her nieces? Influenced as he was, the 



ISLE DE MARTINIQUE 141 

marquis writes, on behalf of his son, to M. Tascher 
for the hand of one of his daughters. Originally 
it was intended to marry Josephine's younger sister, 
Catherine-Desiree, to Alexander Beauharnais, but 
the young lady's death intervened. Josephine, 
then, was sent to France, and Madame Eevandin 
spent twenty thousand francs on the girl's trous- 
seau. Alexander was not very enthusiastic about 
the marriage, but the bans were published and the 
marriage took place within a month after the bride 
had landed. 

The union was not a happy one. Alexander did 
not attempt to introduce his wife to society, and 
did nothing to assist her in completing her scant 
education and to improve her provincial ways. He 
complains, too, that she had the most absurd ideas 
of what conjugal affection should be like, required 
too much attention, and was jealous. Young Beau- 
harnais — he was only nineteen at the time of his 
marriage — travelled to divert himself, and left his 
wife at home. He quarrelled with his wife's rela- 
tives, and accused Josephine of infidelity, and the 
latter retired to the Abbey of Panthemont, a con- 
vent which served as a kind of refuge for wives 
who were separated from their husbands, or were 
about to obtain a separation. Here she was for the 
first time made acquainted with the wiles of society. 



142 CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

Later M. de Beauharnais rendered the most com- 
plete apologies, acknowledging that Josephine was 
not at fault, and as a reconciliation seemed impos- 
sible, a separation was agreed upon. She returned, 
with her little daughter, Hortense, to the scenes 
of her childhood, and thus she wrote of this peace- 
ful time so soon to be exchanged for a life as excit- 
ing and wonderful as any that woman ever knew: 
"Nature has strewn the banks of our rivers with 
flowers, and planted the freshest forests around 
our fertile borders. I cannot resist the temptation 
to breathe the pure aromatic odors wafted on the 
zephyr's wings. I love to hide myself in the green 
woods that skirt our dwelling ; there I tread on 
flowers which exhale a perfume as rich as that of 
the orange grove, and more grateful to the senses. 
How many charms has this retreat for one in my 
situation." From this seclusion she came forth to 
ascend the throne of France and to adorn with her 
matchless charms the most brilliant court in the 
world. The keenest writer of fiction could not 
have conceived of anything more romantic than 
the making of this charming spot the birthplace 
of so distinguished a woman. 

There was another illustrious Frenchwoman 
whose early years were passed in Martinique, who 
swayed for years the destinies of France. Madame 



ISLE DE MARTINIQUE 143 

de Maintenon, known before as Madame Scarron, 
grew up as Franchise d'Aubigne* in this beautiful 
island. The story of her coming is romantic. Her 
parents were Protestants, living in Northern France, 
and hoping to improve their waning fortune and 
enjoy more religious freedom, removed to Martinique 
after the birth of their daughter. Soon after sailing 
the infant D'Aubigne' became very ill and apparently 
died, and the captain insisted upon speedy burial in 
the sea and preparations were duly made. After some 
slight religious services just as the body was about 
to be thrown overboard, the mother, weeping vio- 
lently, rushed forward and begged for one more 
look at her child, and passionately kissing the 
remains, she discovered some faint signs of life. 
The body was taken back to the cabin and efforts 
for resuscitation were crowned with success, and 
recovery was rapid. 

Great was the joy of the pious parents, and earnest 
and devout their thanksgiving over recovering from 
the jaws of death their darling one. How little they 
knew what they were doing ! This Protestant child, 
this child of prayer and faith, lived to be the scourge 
of the church of her parents; for few doubt that 
Madame de Maintenon was the chief agent in induc- 
ing Louis XIV. to revoke the edict of Nantes and 
inaugurate a persecution of untold blood and vio- 



144 CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

lence and horror, which nearly obliterated the 
Protestant name from the fair land of France. 

With the memory of such great names it is not 
wonderful that French Creoles are proud of their 
heritage, and plan and labor for its prosperity. 



XVI 

BATTLES AMONG THE ISLANDS 

BUCCANEERS OF THE SPANISH MAIN COUNT DE GKASSE 

AND ADMIRAL RODNEY A DECISIVE NAVAL BATTLE 

THE SLOOP OF WAR DIAMOND ROCK 

Before leaving this part of the Caribbean Sea 
we ought to recall the naval history which has been 
enacted among the Windward Islands. The battles 
which Columbus fought with the natives were inci- 
dental to discovery and settlement ; then came cruel 
wars for the conquest of the islands, and in order to 
grind gold in one way or another out of the islanders. 
The Roman Catholic church is responsible for much 
of this early fighting, for she had given the islands 
to the Spaniards by a papal bull, which no Protestant 
adventurer felt bound to respect, unless it was more 
than a brutum fulmen, and had ships and soldiers 
behind it. The freebooters and buccaneers of the 
Spanish Main were the terror of the dwellers on 
shore as well as of all who sailed the seas. Drake 
and his comrades were " pirates to the Spaniards " 
so writes Froude, "to be treated to a short shrift 
l 145 



146 CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

wherever found and caught. British seamen who 
fell into their hands were carried before the Inquisi- 
tion at Lima or Carthagena and burnt at the stake 
as heretics." French privateers seized Tortuga near 
St. Domingo, and English, French, and Spanish all 
ravaged the seas in a wild anarchy. 

Then came the period of French occupation, when 
nearly every island of the Antilles was settled by 
French colonists. Language, religion, customs, were 
all French, and the impress made in those days upon 
the islands has never been removed, though all save 
Martinique have passed from under French control. 
England determined that the Lesser Antilles should 
be hers, and fierce battles were fought for their 
possession ; they were taken and retaken, and when 
the British under Cornwallis surrendered to Wash- 
ington at Yorktown, French and Spanish allied to 
drive the British from the West Indies. Rodney, 
who was in command of the islands, had been 
ordered home to answer some charges which political 
enemies had brought against him; but when the 
news came that the Count De Grasse with his vic- 
torious fleet was about to sail for Martinique, Rodney 
was hurried back to his station with all the ships 
that he could muster. He arrived not a day too 
soon. 

We shall let Froude tell the story of the naval 



BATTLES AMONG THE ISLANDS 147 

battle, one of the severest in English annals, of 
which he says that if it had been lost to England, 
" Gibraltar would have fallen and Hastings's Indian 
empire would have melted into air." De Grasse had 
refitted in the Martinique dock-yards. He had the 
finest ship then floating on the seas for his flag-ship, 
and his navy seemed invincible, a fleet with which 
he did not believe that even Eodney would venture 
to contend. " He held all the Antilles except St. 
Lucia — Tobago, Grenada, the Grenadines, St. Vin- 
cent, Martinique, Dominica, Guadeloupe, Montserrat, 
Nevis, Antigua, and St. Kitt's — a string of gems, 
each island large as or larger than the Isle of Man, 
rising up with high volcanic peaks clothed from base 
to crest with forest, carved into deep ravines and 
fringed with luxuriant plains. In St. Lucia alone, 
lying between St. Vincent and Dominica, the Eng- 
lish flag still flew, and Rodney lay there in the 
harbor at Castries. On April 8, 1782, the signal 
came from the north end of the island that the 
French fleet had sailed. The air was light, and 
De Grasse was under the highlands of Dominica 
before Rodney came up with him. Both fleets were 
becalmed, and the English were scattered and divided 
by a current which runs between the islands." 
De Grasse failed to attack as he should have done, 
and only fired long shots which did considerable 



148 CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

damage. Thus the fleets manoeuvred for two days. 
" On the night of the eleventh Rodney made signal 
for the whole fleet to go south under press of sail. 
The French thought he was flying. He tacked at 
two in the morning, and at daybreak found himself 
where he wished to be, with the French fleet on his 
lee quarter. He had the advantage of the wind and 
could force a battle or decline it as he pleased. 

" In number of ships the fleets were equal ; in 
size and complement of crew the French were 
immensely superior, and besides the ordinary ships' 
companies they had twenty thousand soldiers on 
board who were to be used in the conquest of 
Jamaica. . . . With clear daylight the signal to 
engage was flying from the mast-head of the Formid- 
able, Rodney's ship. At seven in the morning, 
April 12, 1782, the whole fleet bore down obliquely 
on the French line, cutting it directly in two. Rod- 
ney led in person. Having passed through and 
through and broken up their order, he tacked again, 
still keeping the wind. The French, thrown into 
confusion, were unable to reform, and the battle 
resolved itself into a number of separate engagements 
in which the English had the choice of position. 

" Rodney in passing through the enemy's lines the 
first time had exchanged broadsides with the Grlo- 
rieux, a seventy-four at close range. He had shot 



BATTLES AMONG THE ISLANDS 149 

away her masts and bowsprit, and left her a bare hull, 
her flag however still flying, being nailed to a splin- 
tered spar. So he left her unable at least to stir, 
and after he had gone about came himself yard-arm 
to yard-arm with the superb Ville de Paris, the pride 
of France, the largest ship in the then world, which 
De Grasse commanded in person. One by one the 
French ships struck their flags or fought on till they 
foundered and went down. The Ville de Paris sur- 
rendered last, fighting desperately after hope was 
gone, till her masts were so shattered that they could 
not bear a sail and her decks above and below were 
littered over with mangled limbs. De Grasse gave 
up his sword to Rodney on the Formidable' 's quarter- 
deck. The gallant Grlorieux, unable to fly, hauled 
down her flag, but not till the undisabled remnants 
of her crew were too few to throw the dead into the 
sea. Other ships took fire and blew up. Half the 
French fleet were either taken or sunk ; the rest 
crawled away for the time, most of them to be picked 
up afterwards like crippled birds. On that mem- 
orable day was the English empire saved. The 
American colonies were lost ; but England kept her 
West Indies." This naval battle settled the ques- 
tion of sovereignty in the Lesser Antilles. 

Between Martinique and St. Lucia, but close to 
Martinique, there is a solitary rock, precipitous and 



150 CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

apparently inaccessible, which claims our atten- 
tion. It lies a mile south of the promontory known 
as Morne clu Dimant, and is five hundred and 
seventy-five feet in height to its level top. There 
the English admiral, Sir Thomas Hood, once landed, 
and hoisted a garrison of dare-devil sailors with guns 
and provisions to the top of the rock. The crag was 
christened " His Majesty's sloop-of-war Diamond 
Rock "; and for nine months, from this sea-girt cita- 
del, the British seamen startled the vessels of France 
and Spain, as they swept the neighboring seas with 
the guns of this strange man-of-war. The crew of 
Diamond Rock were finally compelled to yield to 
starvation what they never could have been obliged 
to surrender by force of arms, and the rock has ever 
since been carefully guarded against capture by the 
Frenchmen of Martinique. 



XVII 
ST. LUCIA 

THE BEST LANDING PLACE IN THE CARIBBEES TOWN OF 

CASTRIES THE LOFTY AND WEIRD PITONS TALES 

AND TRADITIONS 

Leaving Martinique after midnight, the early 
morning found us coasting along a most beautiful 
island, with forest-clad hills and deep, dark valleys 
lying between. The color effects were as wonderful 
here as at Dominica. The near slopes were covered 
with rich yellow-green fields of sugar-cane, the lofty 
peaks beyond were blue and purple, and the sea, 
which was hardly ruffled by the morning breeze, 
was like mother-of-pearl with streaks of silver where 
the currents changed its shining surface ; far in the 
distance twin peaks were dimly seen through the 
haze above the nearer mountains, which on approach 
proved to be the two Pitons, the most remarkable 
of all the strange creations which we saw in this 
region of subterranean and volcanic forces. 

St. Lucia is the largest of the islands that we 
visited, with the exception of Guadeloupe and 

151 



152 CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

Trinidad. It has an area of one hundred and fifty 
thousand acres, a coast line of one hundred and fifty 
miles, and is forty-two miles long and twenty miles 
broad. From its lofty mountains, watered by fre- 
quent rains, numerous streams descend to the ocean ; 
and at their mouths there are many bays and road- 
steads for vessels. The island lies in 13 degrees 
50 minutes north latitude and 60 degrees 58 min- 
utes west longitude. It has between forty and 
fifty thousand inhabitants, the vast majority of 
whom are blacks. At the northeastern extremity 
of the island is a high cliff detached from the 
mainland, where Admiral Rodney, a century ago, 
established a signal station, and from which he 
watched the manoeuvres of the French fleet whose 
headquarters were at Martinique. Passing through 
a narrow strait between two lofty headlands, the 
steamer entered one of the best harbors in the West 
Indies, and was soon alongside a fine stone wharf. 
This was the only place during our voyage among 
the Caribbees, where we were able to land from a 
gang-plank and without the service of a small boat. 
Large sums of money have been spent here by the 
British government to deepen the harbor, and make 
the place a coaling station for the British navy and 
for the Royal mail steamers. Here is the town of 
Castries, named in honor of the French marshal 



ST. LUCIA 153 

De Castries in 1785, when the French held the 
place. 

The ruins of an ancient fortress crown the heights 
of Morne Fortune upon the southern side of the 
town, and a few British soldiers showed us by their 
presence to whom the island now belongs. 

Castries has been built upon made ground, at the 
foot of the heights, and is occupied chiefly by blacks, 
who live in long rows of little wooden houses with 
corrugated iron roofs. There is a handsome market, 
neat and well supplied; a pretty botanical garden 
with a rich variety of trees and tropical plants, with 
its ground full of snake holes ; and a comfortable 
reading room and library of about a thousand vol- 
umes. The people speak English, and the whites 
all live upon the hills around the harbor ; for the low 
ground is unhealthy, and has a bad reputation for 
fevers. 

Here, as at St. Thomas, we saw women coaling 
the vessels. Their short skirts and naked arms 
and shoulders revealed brawny limbs and chests 
on which the muscles stood out as on a sculptor's 
bronze when, with the great baskets of coal upon 
their heads, they mounted the gang-planks of the 
vessels at the pier. They sang a monotonous chant 
as they worked in the grime and dust of the 
coal breakers or marched in single file across the 



154 CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

wharf to throw in their loads. Even the coal dust 
could hardly make them blacker than they came 
from nature's hand, and there was little except 
their arrowy uprightness to differentiate them from 
the animals among which they labored. We were 
not disposed to linger at Castries, though we had 
invitations to visit in the island. We were becoming 
rather impatient for a more extended civilization 
than this island afforded, and were already thinking 
of Barbados and Trinidad. 

The voyage from Castries to St. Vincent was one 
of our finest experiences. We coasted the leeward 
side of St. Lucia till sundown, watching peak after 
peak of a superbly foliated mountain chain with 
admiration, till the climax came in the wonderful 
Pitons, two immense cones 2720 and 2680 feet 
in sheer height from the water's edge. The loftiest 
one seemed to be almost as difficult of ascent (except 
for its ice) as the last three thousand feet of the 
Matterhorn in the Zermatt valley, which it much 
resembles in shape. But their forms change as the 
vessel passes by these wonderful peaks, and so also do 
their colors change under the varying atmosphere. 
At their foot a beautiful bay opens, where a green 
plantation and the white houses of a little hamlet 
relieve the severity of the landscape. Above and 
behind this bay, however, rises the sombre mountain 



ST. LUCIA 155 

of the Souffriere, a smoking sulphur vent whose 
blue fumes mingle with gray mists and rain-clouds, 
which are forever hovering about the mountains. 
No description can do justice to the fantastic and 
awe-inspiring picture which these towering masses 
present. Even photographs fail to convey the at- 
mosphere of the scene, but the landscape painter has 
here, as elsewhere among these islands, a noble 
subject, in form and color unique and wonderful, 
for his study and reproduction upon the canvas. 
History or tradition tells a story of three sailors 
who tried to climb these awful steeps, watched with 
breathless interest by their less adventurous com- 
rades. As they neared the summit one and another 
were seen to fall suddenly, as if stricken by an 
enemy, and the third also, just as he was waving 
the flag in triumph on the summit, fell backwards 
a corpse. These repeated disasters were ascribed to 
the deadly bite of the fer-de-lance, that dreaded 
serpent which infested St. Lucia in past years, but 
whose descendants have been nearly extirpated by 
the mongoose, which is now in turn voted a nuisance 
by the planters of the island. A practical view of 
the tale, with the Pitons in sight, lessened our faith 
in the tradition of the climbing and bitten sailors. 
Even with the aid of a powerful field-glass, it would 
be quite impossible to look through the dense 



156 CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

thickets and watch the progress of any climber on 
the seaward side of the Pitons ; and so, though the 
tale is illustrative of the reckless courage of the sea- 
men of former times, and the dreadful enemies which 
lay in wait for early travellers in St. Lucia, we can 
only offer it as a bit of sensational literature with 
rather a slight foundation of fact. 

St. Lucia has, however, a wonderful record of 
battles on land and sea which well attests the brav- 
ery of the peoples who fought for supremacy in the 
Spanish Main in the seventeenth and eighteenth 
centuries. In 1605 sixty-seven colonists landed at 
St. Lucia and took possession in the name of James 
the First of England. Two months later the Caribs 
drove them into the sea. It was more than thirty 
years before another attempt at settlement was 
made by a British colony and with the same result. 
In 1642 the king of France, who had assumed the 
sovereignty of a large part of the West Indies, sold 
St. Lucia to two Frenchmen for about eighty thou- 
sand dollars. These Frenchmen established a col- 
ony, which was attacked and conquered in 1664 
by a party of English from Barbados ; but the 
treaty of Breda gave the island back to France. 
St. Lucia changed hands many times, and was also 
a neutral ground during the next fifty years. 
From 1756 to 1782, France and England fought 



ST. LUCIA 157 

again and again for the possession of St. Lucia. 
The greatest and most decisive conflict was on 
April 12, 1782, a naval battle which I have already 
described, when Admiral Rodney almost annihilated 
the French fleet and took De Grasse, the French 
admiral, a prisoner; for which service he was made 
a peer of the realm and received a pension of two 
thousand pounds for himself and his heirs. The 
French government was restored by treaty in 1784, 
and under the Directory, in February, 1794, Gen- 
eral Ricard, the French governor of St. Lucia, 
abolished negro slavery throughout the French 
Antilles, forty years before English emancipation in 
the West Indies, and seventy years sooner than the 
abolition of slavery in our own republic. Strange 
as it seems, this blow for freedom was struck from 
Paris by the leaders of the French Revolution. 

Bloody battles continued to be fought between 
the French and English for the ownership of St. 
Lucia, from 1794 to 1803. What the English gained 
by fighting, was often given back to the French 
by treaty. In the famous battles of 1796, the 
negroes united with the French and made a gallant 
struggle, for they were fighting to retain the free- 
dom which the French had given them. It was, 
however, in vain, and the island, after more than 
a century and a half of warfare for its possession, 



158 CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

became English soil. The English soon lost all 
interest in what had cost them so dear, and only 
within a few years has the English government 
awaked to the value and importance of St. Lucia 
among her West Indian colonies. It is a most val- 
uable island with fine harbors, full of tropical pro- 
ductions, and with sulphur mines in the Souffriere 
which could supply the powder factories of the world. 
Those who are interested in natural phenomena 
should visit these volcanoes and read in Humboldt's 
"Personal Narrative," book fifth, his descriptions 
of the Antilles and their natural history, and espe- 
cially those pages which treat of the great erup- 
tions of 1812, which culminated in the tremendous 
outbreak of the Souffriere of St. Vincent — whither 
now the Madiana had set her course. 



XVIII 
ST. VINCENT AND THE CxRENADINES 

A SUPERB AMPHITHEATRE OUTBURST OP A VOLCANO — 

MAKING ARROWROOT — BARGAINING FOR A BABY — 
A LITTLE ARCHIPELAGO 

Running southward through the night, we crossed 
the channel south of St. Lucia, and in the morning 
reached the next link in the chain of the Caribbee 
Islands, and came to anchor off St. Vincent. It has 
been said that four islands among the Caribbees 
realize one's ideals — Guadeloupe, Dominica, Mar- 
tinique, and St. Vincent. The first is vast, grand, and 
gloomy; the second sombre in its mountains, but 
breaking out into smiling tracts of cultivated land; 
the third combines features of the first two, and adds 
the element of a large and picturesque population ; 
while St. Vincent has all the natural wonders and 
beauties of the other three, and a certain air of deli- 
cate culture which is entirely its own. 

We were anchored in a lovely bay with a fort 
crowning the headland on our right, and facing 
Kingstown. The town is situated in a superb 
amphitheatre which rises from the water with its red- 

159 



160 CRUISING AMONG THE CAKIBBEES 

roofed houses showing through palm groves, and a 
few fine stone structures, among which are churches 
of five denominations of Christians. Behind these 
buildings are the botanical gardens and the governor's 
house overlooking all the town. St. Vincent is a 
single peak, with no outlying rocks or islets. It is 
larger than it seems, being seventeen miles long and 
ten miles broad, with an area of one hundred and 
thirty-one square miles and a population of nearly 
fifty thousand. A mountain ridge divides the island, 
and here, at the height of a mile, is the vast crater of 
Morne Garon, which was the scene of a tremendous 
eruption in 1812, when the earthquakes which for 
two years had terrified 'the South American coast 
and the West India Islands, had culminated in an 
explosion which at Caracas buried in a moment ten 
thousand people ; wrought ruin along the whole line 
of the Andes, and ended in an awful outburst from 
the Souffriere of St. Vincent, whose dust darkened 
the sun for an entire day, and spread over a hundred 
miles of sea and land. This eruption changed the 
appearance of the island, and seemed to have de- 
stroyed its eastern end. The present crater, formed 
at that time, is half a mile in diameter and five hun- 
dred feet deep. The old crater is now a beautiful 
blue lake, walled in by ragged cliffs to a height of 
eight hundred feet. 



ST. VINCENT AND THE GRENADINES 161 

But the devastation of April, 1812, has not been 
repeated. The volcano did its work and gave vent 
to the hidden forces of a continent, and beneficent 
Nature has repaired the ruin and made the island 
more beautiful than ever. We landed from boats at 
a little wharf built out from the sandy beach which 
curves from the northern headland around to the 
southern promontory, and found Kingstown a neat 
and pleasant town. Some of the party made friends 
with residents, and were invited to bring their pa- 
jamas and make an interval in the voyage under the 
palm and cinnamon trees with tropical company and 
its delights ; but they were loyal to their companions 
and, though sorely tempted, followed the example of 
Ulysses without being tied to the mast or having 
their ears plugged with wool after the style of the 
Homeric hero. 

We found that the stone buildings along the sea- 
shore were occupied by a police station and govern- 
ment stores. Three streets, broad and lined witli 
good houses, are laid out fronting the water, and 
these are intersected at right angles by other streets 
which run back to the foot-hills, from which roads 
lead into the mountain regions and around the shore 
to the north and south. Along these streets are 
rows of palms whose columnar stems are crowned 
with waving fronds, so that the town lies in a beauti- 



162 CRTJISIKG AMOtfG THE CARIBBEES 

ful crescent leaning back against the verdurous hills, 
itself half-hidden in a lovely grove, while far above 
and beyond rises the dark mountain around whose 
torn and rent edges the clouds are ever floating. 
Froude was reminded of Norway by the scene, and it 
is true that St. Vincent has some of the characteris- 
tics of those bright wooden-built towns which the 
traveller finds upon the steep sides of the dark fjords 
of that northern land, and here nature is so lavish of 
her treasures that the sentiment of grandeur is quite 
overcome by the softer beauties of the landscape. In 
the centre of the picture as seen from the roadstead 
is the handsome government house. It stands at the 

O 

highest point of a richly stocked and well-cultivated 
botanical garden, where we saw plantations of pine- 
apples, the cinnamon, clove, camphor and nutmeg, 
mahogany, ceiba, cottonwood and many wildwood 
trees, and a great variety of plants and flowers. The 
main room of the government house is a wide hall 
reaching from front to rear, furnished and used for 
both salon and dining-rooms, with bedrooms opening 
out on either side. Beyond these is a large and deep 
tank for bathing, and still further on are the ser- 
vants' offices and farm buildings. Loaded with 
flowers and fruits we descended to the town, passing 
upon our way an arrowroot plantation with its simple 
mill. The root grows in fields which are planted 



ST. VINCENT AND THE GRENADINES 163 

as corn is planted for fodder. When sufficiently 
grown it is dug up and carted to the mill. The 
tubers are there broken off, ground, washed, and 
strained, and the mass is allowed to settle for a few 
days. The product is then placed on wire-work 
frames of different-sized meshes, to dry. It gradually 
sifts down from the coarse upper frame to the lowest 
fine netting, and by that time it has become dry and 
is ready to be barrelled and shipped. It now brings 
five dollars a barrel, or about eight cents a pound. 
Not many years ago it brought from forty to sixty 
cents. This high price led many into the business 
and like most West Indian industries, this has been 
overdone, with the usual result. 

We visited several of the island schools and 
found that the process of teaching was largely 
oral, the whole class reciting in unison with the 
teacher and memorizing their lessons. The chil- 
dren were, of course, all black, and seemed bright 
and attentive, and the teachers were painstaking, 
but education does not appear to elevate the people. 
They are not idle, dissipated, or wicked, but only 
lacking in ambition. Like most of the negroes in 
the islands, they prefer to be governed rather than 
to govern. They do not know how to rule, and 
they do know how to serve ; and in the service of 
a superior race they are kindly, and fairly faithful 



164 CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

where they are well treated, now that there is no 
slavery. Their morals cannot be judged by the 
standard of white communities, and it seems to 
be almost impossible to apply the notions of civil- 
ization to them. As I came into the town, a number 
of negro women were sitting in front of their cot- 
tages, while the naked children played around. 
One little fellow of perhaps five years was carrying 
a large pail upon his head, followed by a smaller 
child bearing a cocoanut, and a toddling two-year- 
old bringing up the rear with an empty tomato can 
neatly balanced on his growth of black wool. They 
inarched in file, back and forth, without once shak- 
ing off their little burdens, and were thus learning 
to carry those huge loads upon their heads without 
mishap or apparent effort, which never cease to as- 
tonish the traveller. One of the women held up 
to me by one leg a beautiful specimen of black 
humanity, and in jest I offered five francs for the 
child. "You give ten and have him," was the un- 
expected reply, to which I at once demurred. The 
mother was evidently in earnest, and urged : " Take 
him to New York and he grow big and wait on 
rich gentleman ; plenty same here ; say ten, gentle- 
man ; see I give him for ten." Had it been a 
monkey, I must have surrendered, but the risk and 
responsibility for a soul bought for ten francs was 



ST. VINCENT AND THE GRENADINES 165 

too much for me, and I was sorry for my jesting 
offer. 

Lir voyage to the southward was drawing towards 
its end. We steamed from St. Vincent past the 
Grenadines, which are a group of long, low islands 
varying from mere rocks to islands having an area 
of eight or ten thousand acres. Most of them are 
inhabited by a contented and fairly prosperous 
population. Becquia is the largest and nearest to 
St. Vincent. It is six miles long and a mile wide, 
and its highest hill is nearly a thousand feet above 
the sea. Balliceaux, Battowia, Mustique, Canonau, 
Carriacou, and Union Island are some among many 
owned perhaps by one person or firm. Cattle and 
sheep are raised on these islands, but the only com- 
munication between them and the larger islands is 
by boats. Grenada is the farthest south of the 
Caribbee Islands and is one of the most beautiful 
of the chain. It is eighteen miles long and seven 
broad, with lofty and extinct volcanic craters, and 
a picturesque lake more than two miles in circum- 
ference and two thousand feet above the sea. We 
were sorry not to visit its capital, Georgetown, also 
called St. George's, with its fine harbor, walled fort, 
pretty red-roofed houses on the hillside, and churches 
with tapering spires. There are many monkeys in 
the mountains of Grenada, and great is said to 



166 CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

be the sport of hunting them, and there is also 
agreeable human society in the town. But we 
were bound for Barbados, and all night long we 
rolled, steaming easterly against a head wind and 
sea, to the temporary discomfort of some of the 
passengers. Morning found us at anchor in front of 
Bridgetown among a crowd of vessels, with the green 
and white island of Barbados densely dotted with 
little cabins among sugar-cane fields, extending as far 
as the eye could reach. 



XIX 

BARBADOS 

A SCENE OF BUSY LIFE SWARMS OF PEOPLE — BRIDGE- 
TOWN" AND THE ICE HOUSE CRISIS IN THE SUGAR 

TRADE BENEFICENT EFFECTS OF BRITISH RULE 

The winter sky was cloudless, and the winter sun 
in the roadstead of Barbados was as hot as the July 
sun in New York. The thermometer in the shade 
marked seventy-four degrees at sunrise; at noon, in 
the sun, it rose to one hundred and twenty, and no 
white person walked in the streets of Bridgetown 
without an umbrella. But a steady trade wind blew 
from the ocean all day long, and made a quiet exist- 
ence in shady places comfortable. From the deck 
of the steamer we looked upon a handsome city 
whose dazzling whiteness was relieved here and 
there by clusters of green palms, while beyond lay 
undulating fields of sugar-cane, among which little 
cottages were thickly planted. Carlisle bay was 
full of vessels. Great steamers from Europe and 
South America were loading and discharging car- 
goes into lighters, while four-masted schooners and 

167 



168 CRUISING AMONG THE CAEIBBEES 

other sailing vessels from the United States, from 
Canada, Denmark, and Norway, lay moored in the 
roads. Our own White Squadron and war vessels 
of several European nations added impressiveness 
to the marine picture, and multitudes of fishing 
smacks, with cargoes of flying-fish, skimmed over 
the dancing waves. Rowboats manned by half a 
dozen negroes plied to and fro, between the little 
artificial harbor where small vessels could lie along- 
side, and the larger craft which were anchored in 
the bay. 

The scene was full of busy life and quite in 
contrast with our peaceful and lonely anchorages 
for a month past at the beautiful islands on our 
southern course. It was evident that we had come 
to a sort of maritime exchange, a port of call where 
goods and passengers were transshipped, where ves- 
sels stopped for mails and supplies, a centre of trade 
and commerce. Everything bore the impress of 
Great Britain. The negroes spoke no foreign 
patois, but chattered in pure English; the boats 
were huge and strong, with heavy oars, such as one 
sees in Liverpool and Hull ; officials in uniform were 
numerous, and on landing we walked over English 
roads, well swept and watered, and among shops 
and buildings which reminded us of a dozen English 
seaports. In an hour we saw more white people 



BARBADOS 169 

in Bridgetown than we had seen in all the other 
Windward Islands. There were many heavy car- 
riages and carts in the streets, most of which had 
come from England, with now and then a lighter 
vehicle which betrayed its Yankee origin. Had it 
not been for the throngs of black people, we might 
have imagined ourselves in a town of the British isles. 
But this feature of Barbadian life dispelled all such 
illusions. There is no part of the British empire, 
indeed no country in the world, which is more 
thickly peopled than Barbados, and of course the 
vast majority of the people are blacks. It is esti- 
mated that nine-tenths of the two hundred thousand 
inhabitants are of this race, and they swarm in the 
streets and over the roads and seem to crowd the 
country with their cabins. There are more than a 
thousand people to every square mile of the island, 
and when I add that less than one-fifteenth of the 
land is uncultivated, and out of this small area much 
must be deducted for houses and other buildings, 
for public and private parks, and for burial places, 
the crowded condition of the black population will 
be apparent. They multiply too with rapidity, and 
they stay where they are born. Hence the ques- 
tion of support is an ever-present problem. Wages 
at the time of our visit were at the starvation point, 
if there can be any such point in a tropical country 



170 CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

where nature does so much for man and requires so 
little. I was told again and again, that day laborers 
worked for a shilling a day, and that even at that 
rate there were many who could not get employment. 
With the terrible depression of sugar, which is the 
main agricultural product of the island, the outlook 
for the laborer is very gloomy. While I am writing 
these lines a press despatch is handed to me, which 
reads as follows : — 

" The West Indian sugar trade is passing through 
a serious crisis. In Barbados the crop now reaping 
is very far below the average, in some cases less than 
half. Many estates are in the hands of the official 
assignee, in chancery, and the number is increasing 
daily. The present deplorable condition of affairs is 
regarded generally as only a beginning. The colony 
is over populated, money is scarce, the number of 
unemployed alarmingly great, and the wages small. 
Agricultural laborers can now be engaged for twenty 
cents a day. Women get only twelve cents. Thou- 
sands of both sexes are unable to find employment at 
even these rates. The government of Barbados has 
taken steps to assist emigration. It has sent commis- 
sioners to inspect several of the neighboring colonies 
to oive form to a scheme of colonization. The news 
from St. Lucia and Trinidad is that man}'' estates in 
these colonies have been abandoned. At Antigua, 



BARBADOS 171 

Dominica, St. Kitt's, St. Vincent, and generally 
through the Greater and Lesser Antilles the same 
state of affairs exists. On several islands public 
meetings have been held and resolutions have been 
adopted for transmission to the secretary of state for 
colonies, directing his attention to the impending ruin 
of the sugar industry in the British West Indies. 
The secretary has been asked to approach France and 
Germany with a view to ending their system of 
bounties to the growers of beet sugar and, failing in 
this, to have a duty imposed on all sugars imported 
into England from the bounty countries." 

As a natural result of such hard times, fears were 
expressed of riot and crime should this state of things 
be long continued. If such danger exists, I am bound 
•to say that there were no visible signs of a coming 
storm. The streets were full of busy crowds, the 
markets were heaped with all sorts of food and fruits, 
the shops displayed goods from every part of the globe 
and were thronged with buyers, and the gardens and 
fields were alive with industrious and cheerful men 
and women. There were no anti-rent and labor dem- 
onstrations with banners and mottoes, nor gatherings 
of sullen and discontented workmen. The negro lives 
by the day and is easily satisfied ; and he has none of 
that chronic dissatisfaction with the existing order of 
things, which breeds so much wickedness and misery 



172 CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

among what we call " the masses " in our continental 
and highly civilized communities. 

Bridgetown has fine public buildings and many 
elegant residences. The houses are built of the lime- 
stone which has been reared by coral insects over the 
old volcanic formations of the island. It is easily 
worked, and so white that under the bright sun there 
is always a glare, and so easily pulverized that with 
the prevailing trade winds there are always clouds of 
dust on the highways, and in those streets which are 
not constantly watered. The best part of the place 
is occupied by the governor, the bishop, the attor- 
ney-general, and the barracks and parade ground of 
the English troops, but there are also several long 
avenues shaded by rows of palms on which new and 
pretty villas stand in richly cultivated gardens. 
Some older and larger residences occupy beautiful 
parks adorned with superb tropical trees. These hand- 
some places are in striking contrast to the crowded 
rows of negro cabins which line the road far out 
towards the cane fields. A railway runs across the 
island, the only one in the Caribbees, and by this 
conveyance some of our party made a visit to Codring- 
ton College, a long-established and honorable seat of 
learning. On Trafalgar Square stand a small monu- 
ment to Nelson and a big banyan tree which rivals 
in size and age the one in the park at Basse Terre on 



BAKBADOS 173 

the island of St. Kitt's, though its position in a 
crowded city square makes it appear inferior to the 
Kittefonian tree. 

The great resort for travellers is the Ice House, a 
spacious hotel whose lower story is devoted to shops, 
and its second floor to dining and public rooms. 
Here, meals in which flying-fish form a prominent 
item are constantly going on. A blackboard at the 
entrance displays the bill of fare for the different 
hours of the day, and the tables are always thronged. 
The public rooms are also full of people talking sugar 
and freights, and reading the tissue paper telegrams 
from all parts of the world, which are posted on the 
walls. These occupations are enlivened by the con- 
tinual serving, by black waiters in white clothes, of 
cooling drinks in which the " swizzle " is always 
prominent. A few miles from town, not far from the 
shore, is the Marine hotel, a well-kept house under 
the charge of a Maine landlord, where many Ameri- 
cans spend a portion of the winter months. The 
climate is healthy and the diversions of sailing and 
fishing, added to excellent society if one has proper 
introductions, make this place a pleasant and desir- 
able resort. Here some of our companions during 
the voyage had planned to spend a few weeks, in- 
tending to return by other steamers and different 
routes, when the winter winds had ceased to blow 



174 CEUISING AMONG THE CAEIBBEES 

and spring had begun its verdant procession through 
the United States. A few of them had bicycles, on 
which they proposed to make tours over the excellent 
roads of the island; others were to visit friends in 
Barbados, and a few, tired of voyaging, were inclined 
to exchange their cabins in the Madiana for the large 
rooms and the extended freedom which are to be 
found in a good hotel on land. We were not yet 
ready, however, for city life, with railroads, and street 
cars, and telephones, even in such a pleasant climate, 
and so, with the majority of the party, having tried 
the cuisine of the Ice House, and added largely to 
our stock of curiosities, beads, and canes and shells, 
polished turtle-backs and fans of gorgeous plumes, we 
were ready to embark once more, for the voyage to 
Trinidad. 

Before we go, a few facts about Barbados should 
be recorded. The Portuguese claim to have discov- 
ered the island in 1518, and to have given it the 
name, which means " bearded," because at that time 
there was a large growth of banyan trees on the 
island whose masses of fibrous roots hanging from 
the branches resembled huge beards swaying in the 
wind. Barbados is the most easterly of the Caribbces, 
lying in latitude thirteen degrees north, and longi- 
tude fifty-nine and one-half degrees west. It is from 
eighteen to twenty miles long, and about twelve miles 



BAKBADOS 175 

wide, and contains one hundred and sixty-six 
square miles, nearly one hundred and seven thousand 
acres, of which as I have said less than one-fifteenth 
is uncultivated. The greater part of the surface is 
a rolling country, though in the northeastern part of 
the island, which is called Scotland, there are some 
high hills, called Mounts Hillaby and Boscobella. 
An abundant rainfall secures the region from 
drought, in spite of its scanty water-courses, and the 
extreme fertility of the soil assures abundant 
harvests. If the entire population had not devoted 
their energies to the production of sugar, there 
would be less poverty among the blacks and a pros- 
perity among the planters which the rise and fall of 
the sugar market would not greatly disturb. The 
island has always been under British rule, and it 
shows the beneficent effects of an undisturbed and 
firm government through more than two centuries. 
During this period there are records of slight shocks 
of earthquake and of several destructive tornadoes ; 
but, upon the whole, Barbados may be reckoned as 
one of the safest, healthiest, and, from a social point of 
view, the most agreeable of the Windward Islands. 
We spent a day at Bridgetown, upon the return 
voyage, and left the place with pleasant memories 
of our brief visits. 



XX 

TRINIDAD 

THE DRAGON'S MOUTH AND THE GULF OP PARIA DIS- 
COVERY BY COLUMBUS THREE FEARFUL FIRES 

RAILWAYS, STEAMSHIPS, AND ACTIVE COMMERCE 

FAMOUS GARDENS 

Seventeen hours of continuous steaming in a 
southwesterly direction from Barbados brought us 
within siffht of the blue mountains of Trinidad. 
We passed by daylight along the northern coast, 
and arrived at the narrow entrance of the Gulf of 
Paria, known as Boca Drago, or the Dragon's 
Mouth. Our course was along lofty hills rising 
from the water's edge, which were clothed from 
sea to sky in dense, dark forests. The volcanic 
appearance which marked the Caribbean Islands is 
gone, and Trinidad looks like a part of a conti- 
nent. Suddenly a narrow passage opened through 
the mountain wall, with a little rocky island, 
whitened by sea-birds, in its midst. Far out on 
the horizon beyond the misty clouds which hovered 
over the sea, could be discovered the continent of 

170 



TRINIDAD 177 

South America. Through a maze of currents, 
which would have made the passage difficult to a 
sailing vessel, the steamer forced its way, and in. a 
short time we had passed among a few low wooded 
islands into the vast Gulf of Paria, the great watery- 
plain where the floods of the Orinoco spread them- 
selves before mingling with the sea. The change 
was marvellous ; instead of the bright blue ocean 
we were ploughing a yellow sea, waveless and blaz- 
ing with the reflection of a tropical sun. The hills 
of Trinidad rose in the east, westward the sky met 
the water, while a low shore could be seen in the 
far south fringed with mangroves and palms. 

We had come into the gulf by the northern pas- 
sage ; the southern, by which Columbus entered on 
his third voyage, lies opposite and is called the Boca 
Sierpe, or Serpent's Mouth. Here after a long and 
trying voyage, the great navigator had found land 
again, and in fulfilment of a vow to name the first 
land after the Holy Trinity, he called the island 
Trinidad. He found groves of palm trees and 
noble forests and abundant springs and streams, 
though he had supposed that so near the equator 
nature would be parched and sterile. It was Jan- 
uary, and he likens the climate to that of Southern 
Spain. Equally did the people please him, for he 
describes them as " people all of good stature, well 



178 CRUISING AMONG- THE CAEIBBEES 

made and of very graceful bearing, with much and 
smooth hair." They were fairer than the other 
Indians; their chiefs wore little clothing, and the 
women none at all; they were armed with bows 
and arrows and carried shields of hide. The Span- 
iards came again and again to Trinidad, and made 
its natives slaves, and it was not until a century 
had passed that Sir Walter Raleigh sailed into the 
Gulf of Paria, and landed at La Brea, which is 
now celebrated as the shipping place for the 
great Pitch Lake, and tarred his ship with the 
black bitumen which now supplies the material 
for American city pavements. Two centuries of 
cruelty and conflict between Spain and France and 
England succeeded, during which the natives suf- 
fered most of all, till, in 1797, the island became 
an English possession. The Carib population has 
long since died out, and thousands of negroes and 
East Indian coolies have taken their place. All 
sorts of people resort to Trinidad for purposes 
of gain — English, French, Spaniards, Americans, 
Portuguese, Chinese, gather there, and the island 
is prosperous. Not more than a quarter of the 
soil is under cultivation, but its fertility is great and 
the yield is large. Each year sees new plantations 
of indigo, and coffee, and cocoa, and sugar-cane ; 
and even the coolies get rich and go back to India 



TRINIDAD 179 

with bags of gold and silver, as the results of their 
five or ten years of toil in exile. 

When the anchor of the Madiana went down into 
the Gulf of Paria and we steamed ahead to bring 
it to a hold, the water became as muddy as the 
Mississippi. A steam launch soon came to carry 
the passengers ashore, and on our way thither we 
passed a dismantled and rusting hulk moored before 
the town, and also a river steamer with its huge 
stern-wheel. This was the freight and passenger 
steamer in which one of our company, who had 
entertained us with his mandolin, his monkey 
bought at St. Kitt's, and his photographic views, 
was to ascend the Orinoco. I have seen him since 
the voyage, and his tales of the dangers and delights 
of the way made me long for a chance to go up this 
river and the still larger Amazon, and see nature 
and man in these fresh routes of travel. 

Port of Spain was a curious compound of English, 
French, and Spanish buildings placed on broad streets 
or around tree-planted squares, with tramways along 
the chief avenues, dirty gutters and hundreds of 
disgusting black and gray buzzards, gobbling up 
refuse or roosting on the trees. I use the past 
tense in speaking of the town, for a few days after 
we left the place, a fire broke out and spread 
rapidly, destroying the business portion of the 



180 CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

town and entailing a loss of four millions of dol- 
lars. It was only through the efforts of the 
marines of the American men-of-war New York, 
Cincinnati, and Raleigh that a more terrible loss 
of property and of life was averted. The marines 
to the number of two hundred and fifty rendered 
prompt and efficient service with their fire hose, 
which was taken ashore in the ships' boats. This 
is the third great fire which has occurred here in 
the past dozen years. A fire broke out in the 
Union Club House on the morning of January 28, 
1884, and in a short time the whole southeastern 
portion of the town was in ruins. The principal 
hotel and the largest dry-goods establishment were 
entirely destroyed. The loss was estimated at 
more than $400,000. At that time there was no 
fire department in Port of Spain, and the flames 
subsided only when everything before them was 
consumed. 

There was a second serious fire in Port of 
Spain early in the morning of February 15, 1891, 
which destroyed many lives and much valuable 
property. In a very picturesque esplanade called 
Marine Square was located a hotel, kept by a 
Venezuelan gentleman and patronized largely by 
Venezuelans. On the night of February 14 this 
hotel had about fifty guests, who retired to bed be- 



TRINIDAD 181 

tween eleven o'clock and midnight. The fire had 
its origin in this hotel at about three o'clock of the 
following morning, and destroyed the principal 
staircase leading to the street, thus cutting off the 
escape of many of the boarders. The hotel was 
composed of stone and wood, and consisted of a 
basement, upper floor, and attic. Most of the men 
lodgers succeeded in getting out, but in the attic 
were located three Venezuelan women, — Senorita 
Maria Echevarria and Senoras Rosa Echevarria and 
Rosaria de Osio. There were also nine children 
and two servants sleeping in this attic. When 
these persons learned that the building was on 
fire, they rushed madly to the staircase, only to 
find it gone. Thousands of spectators who had 
gathered in the streets witnessed the terrifying 
spectacle of these mothers throwing their children 
and themselves from the attic windows. A gentle- 
man, Geronimo Fagasin, who had also been sleep- 
ing in the attic, threw himself out of the window 
and broke his neck in the fall. Of those who fell, 
only one survived, the little Concha Osio, four 
years old. The others all died from their injuries. 
The fire meanwhile had spread to the adjoining 
buildings, and in a short time something like 
$200,000 worth of property was destroyed. In the 
fire of March, 1895, though an immense amount 



182 CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

of property was burned, fortunately no lives were 
lost, but many persons were rendered homeless and 
financially ruined, and the commerce of the place 
was seriously crippled. 

There is an extensive carrying trade between Port 
of Spain and Venezuela. Gold and other produce of 
the latter country are brought to Trinidad for reship- 
ment, and goods from Europe and elsewhere are sent 
to Trinidad and re-exported thence to Venezuela. 
Port of Spain is the only harbor of any commercial 
importance on the island, and it is also regarded as 
one of the best in the West Indies. Eighteen steam- 
ers a month from Liverpool, London, and Southamp- 
ton give Port of Spain exceptionally good means of 
communication with England and with the other 
West Indian islands. In addition, four steamers of 
the French line, two of the Quebec and Gulf line, 
two of the Atlantic and West Indian line from the 
United States, and two of the Dutch line run every 
month. There are also seven steamers running 
between the island and Venezuela. The first rail- 
way in the colon}', from Port of Spain to Armia, 
sixteen miles, was opened in 1876. From St. Joseph, 
a station on the line six miles from Port of Spain, a 
line has been built to San Fernando, twenty-nine 
miles, and Prince's Town, thirty-six miles. The 
total length of railway open on December 31, 1890, 



TEINIDAD 183 

was fifty-four and a quarter miles, the whole of which 
was constructed at a total cost of £602,638, and is 
owned by the government. Coast steamers ply 
three times a week from Port of Spain to San Fer- 
nando and on to Cedros in the southwestern corner 
of the island, a total distance of sixty miles. 

The government house stands out of town, in large 
grounds at the foot of the mountains. In front and 
around it are the famous botanical gardens. We 
had seen nothing equal to them in the West Indies. 
Every known species of palm tree, from the tall 
cocoa palm laden with fruit, to the traveller's palm 
whose stems hold a tumblerful of refreshing water, 
were growing here. Nutmeg, cinnamon, and other 
spice trees, immense ceibas with their buttressed 
trunks, flamboyants and almonds, orange orchards, 
coffee and pineapple plantations filled the air with 
fragrance, and masses of flowers delighted the eye 
with rich and varied colors. Huge vines hung from 
some of the largest trees and orchids clung to trunks 
and branches. It was a paradise of vegetation, rank 
and rich, yet under careful and intelligent supervis- 
ion. We spent a morning of delight among these 
natural wonders and beauties, and then strolled by 
pleasant roads to the beautiful Savannah, and lunched 
at a new and well-appointed hotel on one of the streets 
which bound this great pleasure ground of Trinidad. 



XXI 

HINDUS AT TRINIDAD 

CONTRAST OF RACES COOLIE APPRENTICESHIP, LABOR 

AND LIFE A COLLECTION OF LIVING CURIOSITIES 

HINDU PRIEST, ACCAWAI INDIANS, AND COOLIE BELLE 

One of the most interesting excursions which 
the traveller can make in Trinidad is to the coolie 
villages. The coolie village in connection with 
Port of Spain is about three miles from the town. 
The road thither is lined with bamboo thickets and 
rows of palm trees, and their shade is appreciated 
in this tropical region, where the direct rays of 
the sun are painful and dangerous. We drove 
through uncleanly suburbs where black vultures 
were feeding upon garbage, and soon came to the 
village. It is a collection of shanties by the road- 
side made of boards or of palm thatch supported 
on bamboo props. In front of each were men, 
women, and children ; a totally different race from 
the negroes or the black West Indians. Clothed 
in his long white linen gown, with a turban on 
his head, or with nothing on but the scarf twisted 

184 



HINDUS AT TRINIDAD 185 

about his loins, the Hindu bears himself with 
dignity and reserve. His features are delicate and 
clear-cut, his manners are those of a civilization 
of which the negro knows nothing, and which 
indicates the sway of mind over matter. He may 
be a degraded heathen and know little more than 
the African, but he does not thus impress the vis- 
itor. He has the gravity of the sphinx, and an 
aristocratic bearing which is out of harmony with 
his environment. One instinctively connects the 
negro with the animal creation ; it would be im- 
possible to imagine the Hindu as anything but a 
man. Even when seated cross-legged before a little 
charcoal furnace fashioning silver and gold orna- 
ments out of coins, or carrying loads, or working 
in the fields, there is something in shape or move- 
ment or expression that indicates mental power, 
a descent from a cultured ancestry, a superiority 
to present conditions. Much of this is doubtless 
due to the contrast which is presented in such a 
place as Port of Spain between the noisy and loose- 
mannered negroes of the town and the silent, self- 
contained coolies, who dwell apart in their own 
village; but circumstances will not wholly account 
for such marked differences as are seen in the 
races. 

There are many thousand of these coolies in 



186 CRUISING AMONG THE CAEIBBEES 

Trinidad, and upon the whole the arrangements 
under which they emigrate and work in the island 
are beneficial to employer and employed. They 
are brought from Hindustan at the expense of the 
colony under the care of government agents, and 
are of course well cared for and fed during the 
voyage. On arrival those who are in good condi- 
tion are apprenticed to owners who desire them, 
for five years. Families are not allowed to be 
separated except in the case of children who are 
over fifteen years of age. They are bound by law 
to work nine hours a day for two hundred and 
eighty days in the year, and receive the regular 
rate of wages. The law punishes the coolie for 
wilful idleness, and the employer for any fraud in 
his dealings with the laborer. For the two first 
years a part of their payment consists of rations, 
but for the rest of their time they are paid in cash. 
Each estate employing coolies is obliged to provide 
a hospital which is under the inspection of a med- 
ical visitor, and all the labor arrangements are 
subject to the inspection of a government agent 
who visits the estates constantly and reports each 
week to the agent-general of immigrants. He in 
turn reports to the governor, who has absolute 
authority to cancel the contract and remove any 
or all of the coolies from an estate. The system 



HINDUS AT TRINIDAD 187 

is a good one, provided only that the agents and 
the governor are of high character, and faithful 
in the discharge of their duties; and so far as I 
could learn, it has worked well in Trinidad. 

When the five years of indenture are ended, 
the coolie can make a new contract for a year or 
he can work for whomsoever he chooses. After he 
has been in the colony ten years, he can claim a free 
passage home to India, or he is allowed to receive 
instead of that claim a government grant of ten 
acres of land. The coolies have usually preferred 
the former, though some have settled permanently 
in the island, and others have returned for a 
second term of service, bringing friends and relatives 
with them. Though these Hindus are all low caste, 
yet they do not amalgamate to any extent with the 
other blacks. They dwell by themselves as far as 
possible, they have a priest of their own religion, 
and they live a simple family life ; they are jealous 
of their marital rights, extremely fond of their 
children, frugal in their expenditures, and as well 
behaved as any class of the community. They live 
mostly in the open air, for in the climate of Trinidad 
a house is only for a shelter when it rains, or a place 
to sleep ; and a hammock under one of the umbra- 
geous trees is more attractive here than the best bed 
under a roof. A charcoal brazier and a brass pot, 



188 CRUISING AMONG THE CAEIBBEES 

with a few jugs and dishes of coarse pottery, com- 
prise all the household furniture which the coolie 
needs. Rice and cassava root, with the fruits which 
are ready at hand, supply their scanty meals. They 
have little, but their wants are few; they have 
no debts and no duns ; no clothes at the pawn- 
broker's and very few anywhere ; they are accumu- 
lating gold and silver pieces to support them for 
the rest of their lives in Hindustan; they will go 
home to a blissful Nirvana, or to its equivalent in 
their simple imaginations. 

An agent from " Barnum and Bailey's Greatest 
Show on Earth" made his appearance while we 
were at Port of Spain, and engaged passage for 
a curious collection of Indians from South America, 
to which he added as stars for the ethnological 
department of the show, the Hindu priest of the 
coolie village, and " Julia," a beautiful specimen 
of a coolie woman. The agent paid these Hindus 
twenty dollars a month for a six months' trip, 
and contracted to put them ashore at Trinidad 
at the end of their contract. They were all deck 
passengers except Julia, who was allowed a cabin 
and behaved with as much propriety and conven- 
tionality as any of the passengers. The ladies on 
board were very kind to her, and we were all 
sorry when she fell into the hands of the reporter 



* ■•' 







BARBAJEE, HINDU COOLIE PRIEST 



Hindus at tkinidad 189 

who thus exploited the arrival of the Madiana in 
New York : — 

" With ' the sword of Adam and Eve ' before him 
and ' the rod of Moses ' under his arm, the Right 
Reverend Barbajee, high priest of the island of 
Trinidad, descended the gang-plank of the steamer 
Madiana with stately tread yesterday afternoon 
as she lay alongside the dock of the Quebec Steam- 
ship Company. Attired in full sacerdotal robes, 
with the sacred turban upon his head and a smile 
of trustfulness upon his genial, ebony countenance, 
Barbajee has come to convert America through the 
channel of Barnum and Bailey's peripatetic summer 
camp-meeting, popularly known as the ' Greatest Show 
on Earth.' Barbajee was not unattended. Twenty- 
one men and women and four children from the 
West Indies and South America came with him 
on the steamer, under the care of Mr. Bailey's agent. 
There were five Accawai Indians and four Warri- 
hoones from the Orinoco River, four Caribs, four 
Hindu Creoles, two Hindus, and three Barbadians 
in the lot. 

" Their many-hued raiment was of the chintz 
curtain order, but their jewelry was superb. The 
women were loaded down with bracelets to the 
elbows, rings on their fingers, and 'bells on their 
toes.' Ankle rings, earrings, nose rings, and 



190 CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

other kinds of ornaments were distribute d over 
every visible portion of their persons, especially the 
Hindu coolies, of whom there are eighty thousand 
on the island of Trinidad. There being no law 
forbidding contract labor there, they are brought 
over to work on the cocoa plantations under contract, 
and remain to form an important part of the island's 
population. The Indians were nearer to nature. 
Their only ornament was paint, with India ink 
etching. Their raiment is equally parti-colored 
but their facial expressions are less engaging. Bar- 
bajee is a great evangelist. 

"Next to Barbajee, the star of the West Indian 
combination was Julia Blare Lall. Julia is the belle 
of Trinidad, and her fortune is her face, and the 
golden ornaments thereof. Julia talks good English, 
and though her smile is a little twisted because there 
are several ounces of gold pendants hanging to her 
left nostril, she promises to be a success in New 
York society." 

Several of the Indians succumbed to the cold of a 
New York April, but the others survived. I saw the 
priest and Julia in the ethnological procession at the 
Madison Square Garden. They recognized a friendly 
face and broke ranks to shake hands. It seemed sad 
to see them marching around the dusty ring in com- 
pany with a lot of bushmen and barbarians, and I 



HINDUS AT TRINIDAD 191 

only hope that they will get back to their simple life 
in the coolie village without disaster. They pro- 
fessed that a desire to see the United States was a 
more potent motive to make the voyage than the 
money which was offered them, and judging by my 
own fondness for new and strange countries, I could 
not doubt their word. 



XXII 
LA BREA AND THE PITCH LAKE 

WHERE THE PITCH COMES FROM BLACKNESS OF DARKNESS 

TURNING PITCH INTO GOLD HOMEWARD BOUND 

AU REVOIR 

Sixty miles south of Port of Spain is one of the 
wonders of the world; a dark and disagreeable thing, 
indeed, but yet a phenomenon. Pitch is no novelty, 
but a plain of a hundred acres more or less, where 
the pitch is bubbling up at the rate of tons a day, is 
certainly worth seeing, and I had no sympathy with 
the snob who sent his valet to inspect it for him, 
because, as he said, it was a dirty job and a black 
lake was not half as beautiful as an ordinary lake. 
The bitumen deposits by the Dead Sea and at Baku 
on the Caspian, and the oil wells of Pennsylvania are 
not beautiful to look upon, but they are curious and 
instructive, and they promote study and scientific 
investigation. It was once thought that the Pitch 
Lake of Trinidad had some connection with the vol- 
canic forces of the West Indies, but a sounder and 
simpler explanation has been given by practical chem- 

192 



LA BREA AND THE PITCH LAKE 193 

ists and surveyors, to wit, that the buried vegetable 
matter which has been amassed here becomes a sort 
of peat, and then is converted by the chemical proc- 
esses of nature into an oily asphalt, which under 
the pressure of the upper soil gradually oozes up to 
the surface. 

We came to La Brea at daylight in order to avoid 
the heat, which upon the Pitch Lake in the middle 
of the day is something frightful. We were put 
ashore in boats through a heavy surf, landing on a 
reef of pitch which had flowed down into the sea, 
and become almost as hard as cement. The beach is 
mostly covered with black pitch, and a road made ar- 
tificially of the same material winds up a long but 
gradual ascent to the lake. The sun had risen, and 
though the road was partly through woodland, its sur- 
face soon became yielding under the heat, and was 
unpleasantly warm to the feet. It seemed strange to 
see rich vegetation everywhere, but it is evident that 
the pitch does not injure it. I picked huge waxy 
red flowers out of little green oases in the pitchy 
plain, and a variety of smaller plants and flowers 
were growing in the same places. But everything 
was more or less coated with pitch dust, the smell of 
pitch was in the air, and after a walk of less than 
a mile up a gentle slope we reached our goal. The 
black lake with its inky pools, and spots of yellow 



194 CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

bubbles, and water cracks, and yielding surface, and 
strong odor of sulphuretted hydrogen, has been often 
described, but it must be seen and smelled to be 
appreciated. Anything more black, malodorous, and 
repulsive in nature I have never seen upon earth's 
surface. 

It has been likened to a vast asphalt pavement 
with many furrows and holes filled with inky 
waters, in which swim ugly fish and black beetles. 
Charles Kingsley compares it to a crowd of immense 
black mushrooms of all shapes, close together, their 
tops on a level, and their rounded rims squeezed 
tight against each other, with water poured over 
them so as to fill all the seams. But these are inven- 
tions, not descriptions. A vast black lake with mul- 
titudes of circles such as are made when a stone is 
thrown into water, gives a fair idea of the appearance 
from a little distance. When one comes to walk 
over the pitch, for it is solid enough to walk over, he 
finds deep pools and channels of water, and places 
where the pitch bubbles up with a yellowish scum 
and a sulphurous smell. If he stands long in one 
place after the sun is high, his feet sink gradu- 
ally; and horses and carts which load the material 
only remain a few moments in the same spot. When 
pieces of pitch are taken out, nature at once begins 
to repair the damage, and in twenty-four hours the 



LA BREA AND THE PITCH LAKE 195 

hole is filled up again. We saw the process begin- 
ning in a dozen different places. Besides the curious 
sight of little islands of rich vegetation rising out of 
this black plain, there were here and there great 
pieces of wood sticking up endwise, having appar- 
ently come up through the pitch, for they had 
crowns of pitch on the end which rose" two or three 
feet above the surface. A strange quality of the ma- 
terial was that it did not stick to or soil the hands. 
I took a ball of the stuff and worked it like putty, and 
it was not until the water was thoroughly squeezed 
out that it began to show any dirty or adhesive char- 
acteristics. This is due to the amount of earthy 
matter which is mingled with the vegetable oil in the 
product. 

We walked over acres of the lake, dug into it 
for specimens, one of the lads caught a fish in a 
black pool, and lest the sulphuretted hydrogen and 
the hot sun in combination should make us sick, we 
limited our visit to about an hour. The tract is leased 
by the government of Trinidad to an American asphalt 
company for forty-one years at sixty thousand dollars 
a year, and the company is coining money. Its presi- 
dent recently paid nearly three-quarters of a million of 
dollars for a palace in New York, and there is no limit 
to the business which can be done in this material. 
It is used for pavements, for roofs, for cellars, for the 



196 CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

protection of walls for tombs, for tennis courts and 
garden paths, for village sidewalks ; and new appli- 
cations are devised every month which will turn this 
black and ill-smelling mass into the gold which 
Columbus and his comrades vainly sought in Trinidad. 
Thus does the world progress, and the discarded and 
despised materials of one century become the wealth 
of its successors. The asphalt company has estab- 
lished machinery near the lake to crush and purify 
the pitch as it comes from the lake in carts, to form 
it into blocks or pack it in barrels, and an endless 
chain of huge iron buckets has been set up from the 
works to the shore to facilitate the transportation of 
the asphalt to vessels. I was afforded an excellent 
example to what base uses fine things may come, 
when I saw the Madiana, which was so neat and trim 
on our winter excursion, lying on a summer day at 
her New York dock, dirty and grimy, and discharg- 
ing tons of black freight from La Brea and the 
Pitch Lake upon the wharf. 

We rowed through a rough sea back to our steamer, 
hoisted the anchor, and before noon were once more 
at Port of Spain. Our long voyage to the south was 
ended and the ship was homeward bound. 

Over the azure sea, under the Southern Cross, 
among the beautiful islands whose wonderful sym- 
metry and exquisite outlines had become a constant 



LA BREA AND THE PITCH LAKE 197 

delight, slipping into the quiet harbors, palm-edged 
and shadowed by wondrous inland forests, saying 
" hail and farewell " to friends in the larger towns, 
so we cruised back to Barbados and Martinique, to 
Dominica, to Guadeloupe, Antigua and St. Kitt's. 
We greeted each island as a personality and bade 
them in turn au revoir, for we are sure to come 
again into this charming region where the winter of 
our discontent is made glorious summer; where 
"every prospect pleases," and it is not needful to 
quote the next line of the good bishop's hymn. If 
we could only be sure of such agreeable and intelli- 
gent companions, and so fortunate a voyage each 
winter, it would be well to migrate annually like 
the birds. 

One morning we were again at St. Thomas ; the 
men-of-war had departed, the town was asleep ; we 
landed and engaged in commerce; freighted with 
cigars, bay rum, fruits, and plants, we returned 
to the ship, and were soon steaming northward. 
After two days the mercury in the thermometer has 
fallen to sixty degrees Fahrenheit at noon ; there is 
a chill in the morning air; we steam through float- 
ing masses of seaweed ; a deep blue water is beneath, 
and a cold blue and white sky overhead. The pas- 
sengers have packed up their white clothes and 
straw hats, and appear in dark tweeds and winter 



198 CRUISING AMONG THE CARIBBEES 

gray suits, with, blue yachting caps and black felt 
hats. West India mangoes and sapodillas have given 
place to oranges on the table, and we have an appe- 
tite for animal food. Ah, a northeaster has struck 
us ; we meet cold, sleety rain ; leafless trees ; winter 
lingering in the lap of spring. But we are heartily 
welcomed home. Some of the warmest and truest 
of human hearts beat in the colder climates of the 
earth, and it is our happy lot to have a multitude of 
such warm-hearted friends. God bless them all. 



THE END 



A NEW BOOK BY DR. CHARLES A. STODDARD. 

CRUISING AMONG THE 
CARIBBEES 

SUMMER DAYS IN WINTER MONTHS. 

ILLUSTRATED. 12mo. $1.50. 



This new book is a graphic narrative of Dr. Stoddard's experi- 
ences and observations during a leisurely cruise among the 
Windward Islands. The influence of the romantic historical 
associations of this famed Spanish Main is felt throughout his 
book ; and these pictures of the past bring into relief the author's 
vivid descriptions of the islands he visited and his racy sketches 
of the peoples, — English, French, Dutch, Creoles, Coolies, Negroes, 
and native Caribs, who make up the heterogeneous but infinitely 
picturesque population. The illustrations, selected from the 
author's collection, are a real embellishment to the book. 



CONTENTS. 



I. Literature of the Islands. 

II. Discovery and Characteristics. 

III. A Sea Change. 

IV. The Virgin Group. 

V. St. Thomas and its People. 

VI. Santa Cruz. 

VII. From Saba to St. Kitt's. 

VIII. Life on St. Kitt's. 

IX. A Real West Indian Island. 

X. Antigua and its Annals. 

XI. Witchcraft and Superstition. 

XII. Guadeloupe. 



XIII. Sabbath Day Island. 

XIV. Caribs of Dominica and St. 

Vincent. 
XV. Isle de Martinique. 
XVI. Battles among the Islands. 
XVII. St. Lucia. 

XVIII. St. Vincent and the Grena- 
dines. 
XIX. Barbados. 
XX. Trinidad. 
XXI. Hindus at Trinidad. 
XXII . La Brea and the Pitch Lake . 



DR. STODDARD'S OTHER BOOKS OF TRAVEL. 

ACROSS RUSSIA 

FROM THE BALTIC TO THE DANUBE. 

ILLUSTRATED. 12mo. $1.50. 



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know of no book on the same suhject in which so much useful, read- 
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"A most interesting volume. ... A keen eye, a ready wit, and 
great felicity of expression have enabled the author to present to the 
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The book is well illustrated."— The School Journal. 

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are not unused to sight seeing, and the descriptions here given are 
entertaining and happy." — Herald anil Presbyter, Cincinnati. 

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BEYOND THE ROCKIES 

A SPRING JOURNEY IN CALIFORNIA. 

ILL US THAT ED. 12mo. $1.50. 



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reader on with the unfailing and romantic charm of the country." — 

The Independent. 

" Dr. Stoddard has written several books of travel, but none more 
entertaining than this. He had exceptional opportunities for seeing 
what there is to be seen. The descriptions of life ' Beyond the 
Rockies ' are vivid and fresh beyond what we would consider possible 
of a land visited by so many travellers. A superb series of photo- 
graphs illustrate this delightful narrative." — Philadelphia Ledger. 

" From his long experiences as a traveller he has a faculty of seizing 
upon what people are likely to want to know, and his account of the 
wonderful land beyond the Rockies is an uncommonly entertaining 
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thusiastic as the most ardent Californian could desire." — Springfield 
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illuminated by that special humor which we are in the habit of associat- 
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3 



SPANISH CITIES 

WITH GLIMPSES OF GIBRALTAR AND TANGIER. 

ILLUSTRATED. 12mo. $1.50. 



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" A writer who has the poAver of seeing things as well as describing 
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tion." — The Advance. 

"Dr. Stoddard is a traveller who knows what he wants to see, and 
sees it, and a writer who knows how to make his readers see what he 
has seen. In this pleasant tour in Spain he saw the present and 
recalled the past, and his sketches of what he saw gain an added 
touch of romance from the glimpses he gives of what he remembered 
of their former history." — The Evangelist. 



CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, Publishers, 

743 and 745 BROADWAY, NEW YORK CITY. 



